Ali Ballweg

Week 7 took me out to the Mighty Mississippi again, though this time with 8^th graders and canoes.  It was a blast was right up there as my favorite along with weeks 2 and 3.  I only had four campers (all incredible girls) and worked with Katie, Elise and Bryce (after Ross had to leave us due to ear infections in both his ears).  We spent Sunday-Tuesday afternoon on camp and then were at Blackhawk Campground from Tuesday until Thursday afternoon when we canoed down river to be picked up in Lansing.  It was a week full of laughter for many reasons…

Watching the campers practice swamping canoes was probably the highlight, so I’ll start there.  We had a few groups of campers who just couldn’t seem to tip their canoes.  One of them was a group of Nick’s (three of the seven boys were named Nick) who literally jumped out of their canoe.  Then we had a girl (Kami) who was turned facing the person paddling in the back of the canoe.  We were yelling out to her to turn around and they were screaming back, “We’re trying!” as they were attempting to turn their canoe around, not Kami herself.  When she finally got the message and turned around she started screaming, “Dead fish!”  We called back that it wouldn’t hurt her since it was dead to which she stood up and screamed, “IT’S ALIVE!”  I am proud to announce however that she rescued the fish by picking it up and dropping it back into the water, though none of us counselors saw it because we were all laughing hysterically on shore.  We also had several campers loose shoes in the foot of muck at the bottom and one of my campers was stuck for ten minutes as my other camper swam the canoe to shore all by herself.

Although we only had 21 campers total, they were horrible at listening and behaving.  The boys were especially bad about lights out at night so finally one night when we heard them goofing off near the outhouse we sent Bryce over to make them to do pushups.  Katie, Elise and I watched from a distance as they all got quiet and acted like they had done nothing wrong and then we laughed as they immediately all dropped to the ground. 

We did a lot of really ridiculous things throughout the course of the week including doing High School Musical style jumps into the pool at 7 am one morning, playing Ship to Shore in the water, duct taping the outside zippers of the tents shut so that we could tell if a camper went to a different tent during the night, eating lots of dry Happy Shapes because no one packed spoons, and singing The Song That Never Ends at talent show.

My four campers and I wore sequenced headbands all week and called ourselves the Fantabulous Five Sparkly Hippies.  They were amazing campers and I was able to have excellent bible studies and devotionals that related directly to them.  It felt great to know that I was providing them with verses and thoughts on problems they are directly dealing with verses just throwing out random bible study passages.  They also loved having my tuck them in at night and actually called me over to their tent one night when I forgot.

Ross had something extra special set up for the campers after worship on Thursday, and although it took longer than we thought, it was amazing!  The labyrinth was set up inside with four different stations to stop at along the path and their counselor sitting in the middle waiting to pray with them.  Each cabin went separately while the others sat outside of the RC listening to various stories.  The atmosphere inside the room was amazing… It was dark except for candles (which smelled good as well) and there was some really soothing music playing…  It was even an amazing experience for me even though I didn’t even walk through it and was just sitting in the middle.  This and Spirit Worship are both things I definitely plan on remembering and using in the future.

There were a lot of lasts week 7… My last week with my own campers, my last Christ Hike (I was the man with the withered hand and a disciple for the 5^th time this summer), my last Christmas cards, my last week on camp, and my last cabin cleaning…  Some of it (like the latter) won’t be missed… But most of it will be…

Oh and I forgot something else really important about week 7… I didn’t shower all week!  YEY!!!

Sugar Creek had a very special week with the very first ever Fine Arts week!  There were many different programs going on including Music, Theatre, Art, Norwegian and… Horse.  Horse camp was the biggest program with 5 counselors (4 of us lived in Wagons and 1 in the Discoverer cabins).  The campers had a lot of fun and enjoyed the extra time with the horses, however the disorganization and lack of communication was quite frustrating for all of us on staff.  At least a lot of insight was gained for next year. 

On a happier note, I had some great campers and did some cool things! We had quite a bit of free time this week and took advantage of that by going to the pool and canteen everyday, which was super nice.  We also got to package food for Feed My Starving Children again as well as spend an evening at Outpost (I was in charge of games and I made a new version of Ship to Shore and called it Barn to Pasture).  We had some awesome electives, one of which was lasso with Bryce and Jesse.  They had James dress up as a bull (complete with cups ducked taped to a hemet) and taught the kids how to lasso and hog tie.  It was quite hilarious for those involved and those of us who were just watching from afar. 

We got to go on 3 horse rides this week, one of which was an hour and a half (and my stirrups were too short so my knees killed the whole time).  I got Anders the Norwegian Fiord all 3 times so now he and I are great buddies.  Actually this week got me more comfortable around all the horses in general. 

I have a few funny stories from the week to share and the first one happened Sunday evening.  I was unrolling the window flap on the outside of our wagon when I touched and saw a bat!  I was so startled and scared that I screamed and jumped backwards off the ledge that is about 4 feet off the ground.  Another story is when Bryce bet about 15 of the campers that they couldn’t pull a post out of the ground with the lasso rope that he was having them stretch out.  Turns out he knew a few days earlier a few of the horses had loosened it and it needed to come out anyway so after a few minutes they were able to do it and were super proud of themselves.  We ended up having to have the closing festival/program in the barn (and barnyard) because of rain, but it was still fun and one of the activities was “So you think you can pull a wagon?” and all 5 of us counselors had some of our campers pull us around the barnyard in one of the wagons in the rain, which was great fun.

This week I worked with Elise, Sara H., Jesse and Ace (as well as working closely with Jo, Jessica, Heidi and Bryce) and I have to give them all credit for being amazing counselors even though many times we had no clue what was going on.  On top of that, Elise had several difficult campers and yet still was able to make it through the week in one piece.  Praise God for helping her and all of us through it!  We did it and now we only have 2 weeks left!  I’m off on Settlers this week (8th graders who canoe for 3 days on the Mississippi)! 

 Jo, Kim, Sara, Johnna and I went to the LaCrosse County Fair in West Salem last Saturday and had a blast!  I really enjoy taking animal pictures, I especially like the first pig one                

Jordan and Alyson were blessed with a beautiful day for their wedding on Lake Winona.  I didn’t take any pictures at the ceremony, but I did get a few outside at the reception.       

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!