Saturday, June 25

Right now I’m sitting in the Counselor Loft watching The Fellowship of the Ring! But since I’ve seen it a hundred times or more, I thought I would update you all on what’s going on.
 
For the past week, I’ve been on “work-staff,” which basically comprises all the necessary behind-the-scenes tasks. We have helped prepare the meals and clean up pretty much everything. It was tiring, but definitely necessary. It was also a much-needed break from the campers. Counseling is pretty much a 24/7 thing, but work-staff is over after dinner clean-up.

Next week, though, I’m counseling middle school girls at the Maverick camp! That’s exciting because it’s right up my alley. I have a lot of experience with that age group. That camp is similar to the Senior High one, but one day shorter. That means more weekend time!

The Colt campers (7-9 years old) left on Thursday afternoon, so we had a three day break this week! It’s been great so far. Yesterday we took a canoe/kayak trip over to a creek where we climbed up to a waterfall. It was great. Then we started back, decided the water was too rough (it was crazy), struggled back to shore, and called the bigger boat “Blondina” to come pick us up. Canoeing is a work-out though, against tide and current the whole way. I’m sore now! (We had another swing dance party last night, which also contributes to my soreness.)

Today we just chilled out, watched some movies and played card games. There was an Ultimate Frisbee game too. It has been great to just chill.

Oh, I also learned to crochet! I learned on Friday night and made a hat in about two hours on Saturday morning. My hat is pretty awesome. When we go into town next weekend for Independence Day, I’ll get some yarn and crochet some of you guys hats if you want them! They look legit!

Otherwise, not much else is new. Work-staff was pretty laid back, so I had an uneventful week. They caught crab and salmon, which I declined to eat.

I’ve also recently picked the guitar back up. Although I’m not very good, it’s a lot of fun. I learned a great new song here called Micah 7:7. Unfortunately, it’s not on YouTube or iTunes, I don’t think. When I get back I’ll play it for you though.

But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD.
I wait for God my Savior. My God will hear me.
And we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever.
We will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever and ever.

Love you guys all a lot! I wish I had a camera so I could take lots of great pictures for you. I’ll have to content myself with borrowing other people’s pictures.

Much love,
Lauren

Saturday, June 18

(Reposted this from my other blog at leculp.tumblr.com, so it's about a week late.)


Hey everyone! (Hi Granddad! And Grandmom! You guys are Grand.)

I have a few new bits of Alaska information for you! Apparently, we are in a temperate rainforest. In Alaska. I guess we just get so much rain that it’s categorized as a rainforest.

The rain up here is different than rain in North Carolina for the most part. It never really storms hard, there is just a continual drizzle. It’s nice, because life can still go on through the rain. There is no thunder, no lightning, no torrential downpours. (Which, to be honest, I kind of miss. I always liked thunderstorms.)

People in Alaska also don’t use umbrellas. Ever. Using an umbrella in downtown Juneau is labeling yourself a tourist and practically shouting that you would like to be pickpocketed. All the counselors are warned not to use umbrellas for that reason.

There is a type of (ugly) rain boot that everyone here has, called an XtraTuff. Imagine this rubbery tree-bark-brown boot that goes almost up to the knee. It has trim the color of butterscotch (which clashes with the brown) and a logo on the top that proudly displays “XtraTuff.” Wearing XtraTuffs in downtown Juneau is labeling yourself an Alaska resident and displaying your cool Alaska-ness. A lot of the counselors get a pair of these $90 boots. They are comfortable, waterproof, and pretty durable. You can hike in them, wade in water in them, and even sport them with a dress (which people have done.) Google it and see!

One girl, Alison, has a pair. She said that when she was on the east coast she wore them to walk through the city on a rainy day and a man stopped her and asked if she was from southeast Alaska. Pretty much everyone here, and no one else anywhere, owns a pair.

Last night, we had a swing dance party. One of the counselors named Tess is into swing dancing, and she taught us all how to do it. Michael was her dancing partner, because he apparently has swing-danced before. They’re pretty good together, and kinda cute. We also got him to dance in his style (what is it called, popping?) for us. He also did some tutting, and moonwalking. Everyone was very amazed, and he showed them how to do it.

So this past week was the first senior high camp. It was a lot different than the camp of 10 year olds the previous week. I actually liked it a lot better; the whole atmosphere was deeper and a lot more fun.

Of course, I got the homeschool cabin! Melissa, my co-counselor, and I had 9 girls; all are saved, go to the same youth group, and have been here numerous times before. This week was hard for us. The girls didn’t like following the rules, and they wanted to go do stuff on their own (a.k.a. without the counselors) all the time. That made it kind of hard to connect with them, but I think that’s a common issue for this age group. Overall, the week was good. I would like to try senior high again. I feel like I just got the hang of it and then the week ended.

There were a couple of interesting things that happened for the senior high camp. We had the annual Crud War. It was actually pretty disgusting. We played a musical chairs variation. The girls stood in a line and the guys ran around and tried to find a place to sit on the ground in front of them. When the music stopped, if a guy found a seat he was pelted by the girls with all manner of leftover food: oatmeal, applesauce, spaghetti, refried beans, chocolate syrup, ketchup and the like. If he didn’t find a seat, he had to slide down a slip-n-slide sort of tarp covered in applesauce and ketchup. Gross either way. Then the girls and guys switched and it started all over. After that, we threw flour at each other, and then shaving cream. As a bonus, it was raining and the temperature was a balmy 60 degrees. After that, everyone got hosed off or jumped in the ocean and took quick showers. I think I still have oatmeal in my hair. Crud war was interesting (read: traumatic). Not sure I’ll ever look at applesauce the same!

We also played Mission Impossible. This is senior high camp tradition. Around 11:30pm (so that it’s actually dark) we start as a cabin and run around trying to avoid getting caught by guards while completing tasks before any other cabin. All the kids dress in all black and get really stealthy. It’s pretty fun! The night ended around 1:30am with Rice Krispy treats!

For this upcoming week, there is a Colt camp (ages 7-9). I won’t be counseling; instead, I’ll be on work-staff. That means I’ll be a part of the meal prep, serving and clean-up, and bathhouse, outhouse, and dorm cleaning. This is my first week on work-staff… I’ll let you know how it goes! I’m excited to sleep in the dorms for the week. I’ve slept mostly on foam “matresses” for the past two weeks in cabins with wood stoves. It will be nice not to have to spend 20 minutes making a fire to stay warm for the first several hours of the night.

Speaking of night, June 21 is the summer solstice I believe. That’s the longest day of the year. Here in Alaska, the sun won’t truly ever set around the solstice. It gets dusky around midnight and then starts getting light again around 3am. It’s crazy! and I love it. I love light! I can be outside at all hours of the night and still do stuff and see things…it’s so exciting.

I also got to drive a golf cart around today. We explored a cave and it was cool! Tonight I’m going into town with a few other counselors. We’ll go to Walmart and McDonalds, and then sleep in the dorms in town. Tomorrow I’ll help with registration, and then hike back in.

Praying for you guys! Love you all.
Lauren

Today is Saturday. The first set of Bronco (10-11 year old) campers left yesterday afternoon. We love them, but we were also secretly cheering when they all rode away on the tractor. It's been a hard week for some of the counselors, but overall the camp went really well. At this age, the boys are usually more problematic than the girls, so we didn't have as many issues as the guys did.

My cabin (previously "Bear", renamed "Discovery" for our High Seas theme) was pretty well behaved, for the most part. There were ten girls in our cabin, plus the two counselors (myself, and another girl named Allana). I got to know Allana pretty well, and we work great together; we've become really good friends.
A lot went on at the Bronco camp. We had chapel twice a day, cabin devotions, free time, Sky Trolley (the zip line), canoeing, archery, mini-golf, BB guns, horseback trail rides, and cabin clean-up. During cabin clean-up, the staff had devotions while the campers cleaned the cabins. Afterward, judges walked around and rated each cabin. It was pretty funny actually, because the girls had cute (and a few crazy) ideas about cleaning. They would run around and get flowers to decorate everything, write stuff on the porch in pinecones, and put leaves in patterns on the steps (all the while neglecting the simple stuff like sweeping). Once, they thought the cabin smelled bad, so they rubbed deodorant on the bunks and their sleeping bags. Oh, ten year old girls!

The very first night, we talked to them and asked them about their lives. I was pretty shocked (and kind of excited at the challenge) to learn that only three of them went to church and that most of the rest hadn't heard of Jesus. That meant that our presentation of the gospel was the very first that some of them had ever heard, which was pretty amazing. The opportunity is almost incomparable: to share the Good News with someone who has never heard it before and has no preconceived ideas about it.

So we shared the gospel with them in our cabin. They had a lot of questions; some were really deep and some were a little out there. They asked if God was a male, where He came from, about Jesus, Cain and Abel, the garden of Eden... pretty much every question that flitted about in their heads, they asked us. We answered what we could, pointed them to God, and even had to run and get a second opinion for a few things.

The mind of a child is a wonderful thing though. It was really enlightening to see the way that some of them processed and perceived things. We asked them on the second night who they thought God was. One sweet girl answered with profound insight that I almost didn't know what to say. I wish I had her answer word for word, but I'll just have to summarize. She said, "God is everything that is good. He's the mountains, the ocean, and the stars, He's the flowers, the horses, and everything else beautiful and wonderful."

Simple, and maybe not quite theologically correct, but the sentiment is right. God is the author of all good things. "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows," as James said. I love that answer.

As far as accepting Jesus goes, we want them to do everything by themselves. There is no altar call, no sample prayer, no "repeat after me" confession. If a camper wants to accept Jesus, we want him to do it because he understands what he is doing and really wants to.

In our cabin we did have one girl who decided that she wanted to accept Jesus. Allana and I sat out with her on the porch of our cabin and just talked for a little while. We asked what she believed about Jesus, and answered her questions. She decided that she for sure did want to accept Jesus, so we told her how some people go about it and the sorts of things that they pray. Then we sat there with her on June 8, 2011 while this girl asked Jesus to forgive her and be in her life. Just existence of a new life in Christ, the one person who is so especially loved by God turning to Him... it gave me and continues to give me so much joy. I really am so blessed... and so I wish you were here that you could share in the joys.

There have been struggles too, though. One girl was in foster care. Another was only here to "learn about other people's religions." A handful of kids in other cabins had lost a father or mother. Many were in divorced households. Some were the children of drug addicts. A surprising number had been exposed to drugs already. There are so many hurt and broken people, but God's love heals!

I know I'm in the right place.

Thank you for your prayers, support, and encouragement. I am praying for you all too! You have enabled me to come here, serve God, and fight for the people who don't even know how lost they are. A thousand times thank you.

Blessings,
Lauren
PS: I have a lot more stories and funny happenings that I just didn't have time to write about. Hopefully I'll post those soon!

Today is still Saturday here in Alaska. Our daylight now lasts until about 11pm, and the sun gets back up around 4am. In about a month, I'm told we won't have any true darkness at all. Even around 1am, it's still not pitch black like you would expect in a place with no light pollution.

Our Internet access is limited to between 9:30 and midnight on every day except Sunday (when we can use it anytime after noon.)

I compiled a list of all the unique wildlife that I have seen so far. Here you go:
-bear
-bald eagles (a LOT of them; they're everywhere.)
-whales
-sea lions
-seals
-sea anenomes
-porpoises
-marmot (it was really CUTE!)
-lunes (so Michael thinks)
-killer mosquitoes
-noseeums

The last two on the list are really awful. The mosquitoes don't actually kill you, but they are HUGE. I have 17 mosquito bites right now just on my arms from the elbow down. It's terrible! But actually, I have gotten quite adept at grabbing them out of the air with one hand. My goal by the end of the summer is to be able to pinch them out of the air between two fingers. (That would be pretty ninja, you have to admit).

I haven't actually gotten bitten by a noseeum yet. They are called that because you "no-see-um." Apparently they all hatched and will come out next week. They are pretty nasty. A noseeum is a tiny little bug that actually eats your flesh. It is hard to see them because they are so tiny, but when they bite you, you'll know it. It leaves a nice welt on your skin. Pretty painful. Worse than mosquitoes, because at least you can see the mosquitoes to kill and or swat them away. Not looking forward to noseeums!

As I'm writing this, I don't have Internet yet (it's about 8pm here) and so I can't see what I wrote last time. So if I repeat something, I'm sorry!

We hiked to Camper's Cove on Monday, the same day that my cousin Kern arrived! It was a two hour-ish hike. Overall it wasn't too strenous, but my hiking boots still gave me blisters. I think I need new ones. However, I DID NOT get sunburned, which was really exciting for me.

On Tuesday night I told my testimony (and I cried, of course). Half of the other counselors also told their testimonies, the other half told them on Friday night. It was all really good; learning where people came from helps all of us to really understand who we all are and get a lot closer.

We went through the Colt and Bronco camps on Wednesday and then through the Maverick and Senior High camps on Thursday. Some of the younger kids really like puppets, so we do shows for them. Several groups of us practiced with the puppets, singing to corny Christian remakes of old songs.

Unfortunately, Thursday night while we were doing an obstacle course, one of the counselors fell and broke her ankle in two places. She had to be sent to the ER in Juneau. She will have surgery later in the week. Please pray for her healing and that her mom can come up here to be with her while she recovers. She came back, and is still living here until the surgery. After that I think she will continue to stay up here, so please be praying for her! She's been a trooper.

The next day we learned the "Sky Trolley" stations. That's our zip line thing. I got certified to harness, send, hook, and catch people who ride it. Today we also got First Aid/CPR certified.

Everything is all about preparing for the campers! Sometimes it seems like it would be great to just continue the Orientation week all summer, and not have campers. But that's why we're here... to tell the kids of southeast Alaska about the love of God. So while this week has been great, I think everyone is excited for our first week of Bronco camp.

Still unsure if I will be counseling or just on "work staff" (the behind the scenes support work we do when we're not counseling) next week. There is a good chance that I will be counseling though. It would be great if you would please be in prayer for the campers and counselors next week. We'd all appreciate it (we need as much prayer as we can get.)

Thank you for everything.

Blessings,
Lauren

PS: Mom, I miss you! :)

Echo Ranch

Hello everyone! This is the end of Day 2 at Echo Ranch, and it already feels like home.

There is so much to tell you guys. I can’t possibly type it all now. This is just a little bit of it.

My flight from Charlotte to Seattle was almost six hours total, which is insanely long when you’re sitting in one place the entire time. We all finally got boarded and sat down with our carry-ons, then waited 30 minutes and found out that our plane had mechanical issues (better then than when we were actually in the air, I guess.) So we all had to wait more, get off the plane, wait more, get back on a new plane, wait more, and then finally start flying.

When I got to Seattle, Michael Reaser was already there. (He is at Echo Ranch too!) I called him, and he found me, so I had someone to talk to in the airport. We got on our Seattle-Juneau flight a few hours later. I was pretty jet lagged by the time we arrived. We got there around 9pm Alaska time, which was 1am North Carolina time. I had gotten up at 6:30am that morning to go to the airport, so I was exhausted. Luckily, the tide was in so instead of having to hike out to camp, we got to ride the boat (the “Blondina”) instead.

We finally got there pretty late. (Because it’s Alaska time, though, it was still light even as late as 11pm.) All fourteen of the female counselors are staying in one dorm room together. There are bunk beds in the room, 2 showers, 2 toilets, and 3 sinks in the attached bathroom. It’s probably a good thing that no one told me about that ahead of time, because nothing about a dorm room really appeals to me. In reality though, it’s really not that bad. I got used to it really fast, and it’s all simple but clean. The dorms are below the dining hall, and the entire building actually has electricity. Most of the buildings here do, except for the cabins. I think there are 8 girls and 8 guys cabins, and they have wood stoves instead. We haven’t stayed in one of those yet.

I have to tell you, it is absolutely beautiful. The mountains, the bay, the sky… it just feels so much like home. No mountains that I have ever seen have anything on the mountains here. There is a panoramic view from the beach on the bay with snowcapped mountains all around it. They are so big that you have to tilt your head upward to see the top. It’s light most of the day, but so far it has been overcast. That made it a sort of glowy light from early in the morning until late at night.

Today part of our orientation was learning canoe safety. Michael and I were partners. We learned to paddle around, pivot the boat, forward and backward strokes, and how to rescue people if the canoe dumps over. The water here is a lot of glacier water, and what isn’t from glaciers is pretty cold anyway. Even in the middle of the summer, if you fall into the water, there is a 50% chance of getting hypothermia. That’s how cold the water is!

Regardless, canoeing was really fun. There were sea lions that we could see jumping around in the bay a little bit past us. Michael also pointed out a bald eagle nest in a nearby tree. Apparently there are a lot of bald eagles here. And nothing compares to paddling around in the stunning bay surrounded by the hugely glorious mountains. 

I am really really excited to be here. It’s great not having to juggle things and multitask work + school + homework + money + church + ministry + friends. Everything is in one place and I can just LIVE without having to worry about anything. It is so peaceful; I love it.

I could use a little more sun though. It is pretty cold most of the time. We all usually wear sweatpants or jeans and a jacket. Yesterday, though, we played a beach volleyball game and were all in shorts while we were moving.

Overall, it’s only the second day and the counselors already start to feel like family. (No campers yet, and my cousin Kern isn’t here yet either.) The landscape is the best thing I’ve ever seen; it tops every mountain on the East Coast. God’s imagination amazes me. 

We have all been hanging out all night in the Loft (the counselor hang-out sort of room.) But the best part of it all is how God-focused it is. We have had solid quiet time with God a lot, heard testimonies, and figured out our mission here.

We won’t have Internet all the time. I’m borrowing a friend’s computer tonight. Guess I should have taken mine! I’ll keep sporadically updating. Once the campers arrive, I’ll have much less time to write.

Anyway, love you all! Feel free to send me messages. I can’t guarantee that I’ll write back immediately, but I love hearing from you guys. Thank you again! I’m praying for you all. 

In Christ,

Lauren