Ali Ballweg

This week I was on the Wagoneer’s program, which meant that I was in the farthest village on camp and lived in a covered wagon for the week.  I had 5 girls going into 5th and 6th grade (Alanna, Lauren, Bronte, Alana and Kaitlyn) and they were awesome!  They were all friendly, went to bed easily, never got homesick, and were great helpers… I’m definitely praising God for blessing me with such awesome campers the first week.  I also worked with some awesome people this week with having ED, Phil and Kyle in the other wagons and Bryce, Manda and Jenna coming out to help us with every meal.    

Oh yeah, we cooked almost all our meals over the fire, either in a frying pan or dutch oven, in our individual wagons.  This meant that I not only improved my cooking skills, but also my fire building skills.  Sadly most of the time it took 20-30 minutes fore me to get a good fire going because it kept dying out.  However, one morning it only took 2 matches and a few minutes and I was so proud of it!  We also got lucky a lot of the time because scheduling was tight and we were late for meals so our fires would already be started for us when we got back from horses or nature (a big thank you to all you who helped with that).  We participated in a huge variety of activities this week including: Nature (my girls had a blast catching frogs), Arts and Crafts (they made bird houses), pool parties, bible study, an all camp game that was similar to Romans and Christians but way more complicated, the Challenge Course, the Christ Hike (I was a disciple!), electives (I led parachute games), campfires, horse riding (twice- the second time in the rain), and hiking… Just to name a few   

We had some good weather this week, but we also had a lot of rain and even some storms.  For the most part the rain held off until nighttime, but on Tuesday it rained in the evening, canceling electives and sending us to the barn to do some skits instead and Thursday it rained a lot from mid-morning until mid-afternoon, soaking my girls and I as we rode horses for an hour.  Then on Thursday night a big storm rolled in and around 10 we were told to end the campfire and get all our campers inside the wagons.  I had just gotten all my girls tucked in and was telling them a story (I made up stories about a family of woodchucks every night to put them to sleep) when a van pulled up outside our wagon and Jillian jumped out and told us to get in because we needed to head to the storm shelter.  There was some panicking in our wagon for a few moments, but surprisingly they calmed down and were in the van in just a few minutes (the whole camp made it to safety within 15 minutes of us getting news of the Tornado Warning).  Somehow we packed all 21 campers, 4 counselors, and then Karsten and Jillian into one van and raced our way down the bumpy and muddy valley (Jake was shocked when we told him we had everyone and didn’t need to send the van back for more people).  Once we got everyone in the brand new storm shelter (which made it very uncomfortable because there was construction stuff everywhere and the cement floor was super cold) we lead some silly songs and told some stories for about an hour.  It was almost midnight by the time my girls finally got back to the wagon and to sleep so I let them sleep in Friday.  

All in all I had a great first week, although I am tired and sick (I barely have a voice because of the combination of being sick and singing/shouting all the time).  I am very much looking forward to this week because I will be on River Boats and will be co-counseling 10 high school girls with Kathryn!