continued

6/12/08

Well, my bruise has now colored up half of my entire thigh…the swelling has gone down but the pain is still there. If only I could show it off, people would be amazed at the range of color involved in this bruise. Seriously, it’s a real winner.

The last two days I have had off which gave me plenty of time to rest, visit Nashville for a few hours and go canoeing on Center Hill Lake today for about 3 hours. I think it was Monday that had our canoe training which was great. I haven’t been canoeing all that much in my life so it was really good to learn the J-stroke, sweep stroke, and such. Andy and I took that learning to good use today and got some good time in the canoe on the lake; canoeing is a really good work out by the way. In Nashville yesterday, part of my time was spent visiting Radnoor Lake State Park which was a really pretty spot to go for a walk. I was able to really just get away and organize my thoughts a bit and pray, which I really need to do a lot. I saw 11 deer not ten feet away from me while I was there. I was also convinced during my time in Nashville that I should have kept count of the churches I saw. I thought Chattanooga had a good amount of churches, but it didn’t compare to Nashville…huge churches too.

Anyways, tomorrow we start preparing for campers that come in Monday. Saturday I will be working the paintball arena for a father-son paintball day we are having here. I am pretty excited about putting all I’ve learned to action but it also makes me pretty nervous to realize that I will be leading and teaching all these kids and adults how to properly participate in all these ropes course elements. We took our final test on Tuesday; a written and practical test, which took quite some time. It made finally understand how much info that there is and that I will consistently have to be on my toes here at camp. It’s pretty intense…

After the test on Tuesday, we were able to spend some time with the horses. We each were given a halter and a leading rope and we got to pick out the horse we wanted to “catch”. I say “catch” because these horses are very tame and this was just a bit more of our training. To better understand, these horses are used for therapy for the boys’ home that is here at New Frontiers; a home for troubled boys, who struggle in their homes, with addictions, and/or with the law. This is an entire separate entity from New Frontiers Camp, except for every once in a while the boys are brought over to campus to partake in some of the courses if they have behaved well. These boys spend time with the horses on a pretty regular basis; not riding them, but basically everything else. Bonding with a horse is a very therapeutic way to reach guys who struggle with feeling unloved and unwanted. In my time with Generator (the horse I spent time with) I was able to simply to develop a certain bond that the horses take very seriously. Generator could recognize me afterward, which was pretty cool.

Well, there is still a lot going on, but time is limited, therefore, my posts must be as well. It will be an early morning tomorrow so I need some sleep. My encouragement to all of you is to take a look at the last two chapters in Hebrews. They were extremely beneficial to me in these last few days and there is some very impacting portions of Scripture there (let’s be honest though, what portions of Scripture aren’t impacting).
Until the next time,
Loho