{"id":107,"date":"2013-02-16T13:57:48","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T13:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/?p=107"},"modified":"2013-02-16T14:15:13","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T14:15:13","slug":"an-accidental-encouragement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/?p=107","title":{"rendered":"An Accidental Encouragement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">I had to give up the other day. Yep, failure thy name is Boo Boo&#8230;again. Not only did I wake up late for blogging (6:00am), only to find that my computer was mysteriously missing (Scruff loaned it to a youth pastor over at the camp), but I had nothing for the blog. Nothing for you, no words, no wisdom, not stories, no jokes, just three sugar-stuffed children running around my house who needed to go outside, and no more time to blog. So I posted a sentence to that effect on The Campfire and admitted defeat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Lord and I had words over that. I had been telling other people that they should do a camp blog for years and no one took up the torch. \u201cWhy don&#8217;t you do it?\u201d Scruffy asked me. And I would give him the obvious reasons. I was already blogging six days a week and had no time. Besides, what would I say? What if I started the blog and then ran out of words. Of course <strong>He<\/strong><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> called me then, in the middle of a writer&#8217;s conference during prayer and worship. &#8220;Write the Blog Boo Boo&#8221;. I mean, what do you say to that? So I did and now look at me. Out of time, out of words, letting everyone down. The Lord and I definitely had words that day. But that evening something amazing happened.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">I had just wrangled our three boys into bed and was breathing that end of the day sigh of relief when Scruffy came home from camp. He had been talking with the youth pastor who was with that\u2019s week\u2019s rental group\u00a0who had\u00a0told him this story. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">I can\u2019t believe I&#8217;ve never told you this, the youth pastor had said before jumping into his tale. When the church hired me, the current youth leader was walking me through the ministry giving me an idea of everything that she was doing and how they had done it in the past. After we had been through everything, she turned to me and told me that I could change anything that I wanted to about the ministry, except for one thing. I was to take the kids up to this tiny camp in the middle of nowhere called Camas Meadows. Just go at least once, she told me. It\u2019s a special place and they take good care of you. And so I brought our kids up here and we have been coming ever since. We love this place, and you&#8217;ve taken good care of us. I mean we came here without an important bit of worship equipment and you just brought me over a laptop to use. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I realized a couple of things after Scruffy told me this story. 1) God had things to say and I could trust Him to give me words when I had nothing. 2) Camp is smack in the middle of all sorts of ministry that we don\u2019t even know about. We have been a vital part of this church&#8217;s ministry and we didn&#8217;t realize.\u00a0To be the one thing that departing\u00a0youth pastor didn&#8217;t want changed is an incredible honor.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;\">3) Not only did God bring me to tears, giving me some much needed encouragement with this youth pastor\u2019s story. I had also been an accidental encouragement to him. My missing laptop had blessed his camp. And yes, I was upset with my husband for not getting it back on my desk by 6:00am, but despite my ire I had helped someone else out and not even known it. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">God is doing things. Things that we never hear about. Things that are little to us and huge to someone else. Dear Lord, help\u00a0us to do\u00a0a good job with\u00a0the little things. For they might not be little at all.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Boo Boo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had to give up the other day. Yep, failure thy name is Boo Boo&#8230;again. Not only did I wake up late for blogging (6:00am), only to find that my computer was mysteriously missing (Scruff loaned it to a youth &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/?p=107\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-glimpse-at-camp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thecampfire.camasmeadows.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}