A Week at Camp: Arrival Day.
Well, for all the worrying I did, the trip up here was perfectly smooth and quiet -- thank you, Lord! We didn't even have any rain. (Which surprised me because we had a long, loud thunderstorm most of yesterday evening that even made the lights at work flicker!) The only scary moment came when I stopped for gas in a tiny map-dot called Magnolia, Mississippi, and noticed that one of Muse Watson's tires had gotten alarmingly low. But I re-inflated it, and everything was just fine. I also stopped at a welcome center close to the Louisiana-Mississippi border, and I bumped into a lady from my congregation, who was on her way to Jackson. What are the odds?
Beautiful flowers outside the Mississippi welcome center.
Still, it was a loooong, exhausting trip. I arrived here in the afternoon, and I just had to time to unpack, see a little bit of the camp, pick the mail up from the cabins and sort it (which will be one of my duties here) before dinner, which was yummy. The menu for the rest of the week looks mostly good, too.
This caution sign greets everyone at the camp entrance.
This camp is so big and beautiful and well-maintained! (A huge step up from the little local camp that I sporadically attended as a kid.) It's in the woods in rural Mississippi, built around a big lake, surrounded by gentle hills and tall pine trees. There are lots of kids here, and the camp has so many fun activities for them to do. I have my own little private bedroom and bath. It's a lot like a hotel room, small but very clean and nice.
The main avenue of camp. The lake is just behind the row of cabins on the right.
I'm not gonna lie -- my first day here was rough. It's so hard to be the new person in a new place where you've never been before and don't know anybody, but everybody else already knows each other. I ate dinner by myself. I kept hoping somebody would invite me to eat with them, but it never happened. That was hard.
So, I'm going to bed now and say a prayer that tomorrow will be better and that this experience will help me to grow in a faith that is still relatively new to me.
SHEHEKIANU! My old Muse Waston (in the lower left corner) arriving at the camp gates. I got out and took this on my phone while waiting for the Israeli security guard to come open the gate for me. I had no idea there were Israelis at this camp until he biked up to the gate and said, in the thickest accent ever, "You follow me, I show you way to the office."
Beautiful flowers outside the Mississippi welcome center.
Still, it was a loooong, exhausting trip. I arrived here in the afternoon, and I just had to time to unpack, see a little bit of the camp, pick the mail up from the cabins and sort it (which will be one of my duties here) before dinner, which was yummy. The menu for the rest of the week looks mostly good, too.
This caution sign greets everyone at the camp entrance.
This camp is so big and beautiful and well-maintained! (A huge step up from the little local camp that I sporadically attended as a kid.) It's in the woods in rural Mississippi, built around a big lake, surrounded by gentle hills and tall pine trees. There are lots of kids here, and the camp has so many fun activities for them to do. I have my own little private bedroom and bath. It's a lot like a hotel room, small but very clean and nice.
The main avenue of camp. The lake is just behind the row of cabins on the right.
I'm not gonna lie -- my first day here was rough. It's so hard to be the new person in a new place where you've never been before and don't know anybody, but everybody else already knows each other. I ate dinner by myself. I kept hoping somebody would invite me to eat with them, but it never happened. That was hard.
So, I'm going to bed now and say a prayer that tomorrow will be better and that this experience will help me to grow in a faith that is still relatively new to me.
SHEHEKIANU! My old Muse Waston (in the lower left corner) arriving at the camp gates. I got out and took this on my phone while waiting for the Israeli security guard to come open the gate for me. I had no idea there were Israelis at this camp until he biked up to the gate and said, in the thickest accent ever, "You follow me, I show you way to the office."