Surf City 2013 - Day 1

As I sit here blurry-eyed... it's difficult for me to remember what exactly happened in the last twenty four hours. That's when you know we are already having a blast at Surf City 2013! Our travel day was fairly uneventful, other than watching some disney classics and trading McDonald's Monopoly pieces like they were the rarest gems. We arrived at camp and set our feet into the soft sands of Michigan.

Once we got settled into our cabins, we woofed down some camp food and headed to take our swim tests. The water was slightly warmer than the Arctic, but we all survived. Next we were spilt up into teams for the week. We will be on the same team for all of our competitions. They made us conjure up a team name and we were instructed to use a mixture of a mythical creature and a cereal. Our crew came up with the "Blue Kracken Fruit Loops" The points started rolling in... Kylie and Rylee drew us up an awesome flag and we won the first competition. The challenge was measuring how loud our team could get with a decibel reader. Needless to say I wasn't surprised our group was the loudest. I didn't need any kind of scientific contraption to tell me your kids are loud! :)

After our competitions, we headed to one of my favorite camp activities...CLUB! Every night all of camp gathers together to sing some songs, watch a hilarious skit and hear a great speaker challenge them to build a life-changing relationship with Jesus. Our speaker Jerry started out the night making fun of some of the leaders by finding their dopplegangers (famous look-a-likes). Jerry challenged each of us to think about who we look like... not just physically, but who we look like in our actions, in our attitudes, in our emotions. Jerry told us that he was going to tell an amazing story this week about our Creator and how he sees each and every one of us. I can't wait to hear and see our students wrestle with the truth that our lives are meant to be so much more... and my prayer is that they passionately embrace that in a life-altering way. I hope you do the same.

We ended the night with a huge surprise...even to the Surf City Alumni... they rushed us to some buses and gave out glow necklaces and we played a huge game of Dune Wars (capture the flag) under the most amazing starry skies you could ever dream of. It was awesome!

That's all for now... it was a great first day. Check back every morning for new updates and pictures.