Johnson Tattler v.2.0: July 2008

Wow...I've been back for a week now from UM Army and do I feel better. It took a good part of 3 days or so for my swollen ankles to go down enough to be able to bend without hurting like crazy.

For those who aren't familiar with UM Army, it's United Methodist Action Reach-Out Mission by Youth. It is an opportunity for youth and adults to join together as "servants" for God and helping those in need. The purpose is to help others, but for the volunteers to also learn to truly be a "servant" for God in all aspects. They have more than one ARMY campsite, Athens, Texas, is the one our particular group went to this year.

I went this year as a "greenhorn", I've been on mission trips before, but they've always been local/short trips. This one started on Sunday, July 13 and ended on Saturday, July 19. And boy oh boy...at times it seemed like it would never end.

Our first day we got up at 4 am, because one person was an early bird and he wanted his coffee by 5 am...our old pot in the kitchen took 45 minutes to perk up a pot, soooo....4 am we drug ourselves out of bed...and I do say...drug...we weren't perky little campers at that time of the morning. We did find another camper, (2 eventually) who also woke up early on a normal basis and he (they) graciously agreed to turn on the pot for us in the am, if we would just get it ready to go before our bedtime each night. Their names were Mike and Robert. There aren't enough words to tell you how gracious we felt towards these two men for this help. From then on, we were allowed to sleep to 5 am...but by 5:15 we were up/dressed and heading to the kitchen to start off for the days events.

Every day our alarm clock would go off at 5 am...lights out (for the kids) was supposed to be at 11 pm...then we would start our nighttime clean up routine. We did have scheduled clean-up times where the kids helped, and this saved us a LOT. But our normal bedtime was between midnight and 2 am more than once.

As with everything, we experienced hills and valleys. This is a new "terminology" we learned from one of the campers...and I have to admit...I luv the thought process of this. When we would pray as a group, we always hold hands...no particular reason, other than it makes us feel closer to each other...but one night...one particularly "trying" night...we had all experienced some major "tribulations" that shook us to the core. We were all so worn out already and then we had this major incident happen. There wasn't anything we could do about the situation, we had already cried ourselves silly and all that was doing was giving us headaches and making us sick feeling.

So we spontaneously all joined hands to pray...just as we were about to start praying, one of the campers, stopped us...he told us to break our hands apart and hold them up. He held his hand up, spread his fingers wide and started talking. Now look at your fingers spread wide open...HILLS AND VALLEYS...and he ran his fingers up and down his fingers on his other hand, looks like hills and valleys, doesn't it...lol...and isn't this what life is about...ups and downs...or...HILLS AND VALLEYS...God is there for us the entire time, no matter if we are in a VALLEY or a HILL...so when we join hands from now on, we don't just hold hands...we join together as HILLS AND VALLEYS.

This may sound like a silly thing to you, but at that time, we definitely needed that silly little thing. We all prayed a round circle type prayer, everyone said what they wanted or needed to. We were all still worn out and tired, both emotionally and physically, but we knew we could now re-group and be ready to go again and not let the hurdle that almost tore us apart keep us apart.

I'm not going to go into just what happened. I think sometimes when the devil knows he's up against some strong competition, he tries as hard as he can to tear it apart...maybe this is what he was doing with our camp, creating chaos/turmoil so he could be happy, but we chose to let God carry us through a very difficult situation and guide us. I know our kitchen crew, along with quite a few others are very grateful to God for carrying us through this week. It was a hard, tough week, and we couldn't have made it without him carrying every one of us.

God is good...thanks!

Just got back from a week in Athens, Texas with the Texas UM Army Conference. This is a Youth Based mission project. We had 94 youth and adults go to Athens, Texas, (close to Dallas area) and worked on various homes for elderly and indigent that were in need of repair. I worked in the kitchen with a group of 3 other ladies, where we cooked and fed the campsite for the week. My doggies are very swollen and tired, but we all survived getting up at 5 am and working til almost midnight each night. A very hard week, with a lot of valleys and hills along the way, but in the end, a satisfying week. I'll try to find the link from the Athens newspaper so you can read about it for yourselves.

Going to prop my feet up again for awhile.

Cindy

http://www.athensreview.com/archivesearch/local_story_199021318.html