Emily's Journey: To Know & Follow Hard After You: Pictures of Camp!!!

Since I've been back in the working world for a week and have caught up on my sleep I thought I would post a few pictures from Simpson Park Youth Camp (SPYC). For those of you that have never had the privilege of attending SPYC let me fill you in. It is a week of living in a dorm with 20 Jr High or High School girls, eating camp food (which is actually quite tasty), not sleeping, serious conversations, laughing hysterically, great preaching, grass throwing, craft making, relay game playing, God worshiping, spider killing, cold showering (although not that often anymore) fun. I love it. It is literally the highlight of my summer.

Group shot of the Youth Camp Members (no one ever gets to see the funny one)

Most of you know that Jase and I got the opportunity to speak at camp this year on Missionary Day. It was fantastic. We were really really nervous and I had a bit of a rough start, but afterwards lots of people told me that I am just like my mom

(she's a Nazarene pastor).
Camp starts off for the counselors on Saturday. We went to camp in the morning, picked up our teammates and their kids, and the 6 of us headed to the airport to get Fernando. We waited for a long time at the airport and finally he arrived. He hadn't slept on the airplane so he was pretty wiped out. In true American form we took him right to McDonalds

.

After that we went to camp and did counselor training and on Sunday the Youth arrived. Sunday night is always a special time at Simpson Park. We go out under the tent on the athletic field, put some tarps down, crank up some fun music, and play some seriously messy games. Some of the funniest moments come from a game where you had to look at things hidden under buckets and try to identify them the fastest. The trick is that one bucket had a human head under it

As you look at these pictures take a minute to notice Bob. I have never seen him looking so sinister before...

A few other highlights of that night were:
The Snot Shoot - People shooting Coco Puffs out of their noses onto the whipped cream covered face of their partner...

People eating twinkies where the whipped cream had been removed and replaced with a gross mixture containing cereal, mustard, and pickle relish...

Tastes good, doesn't it Abby?

And, of course, Twister. Not with a regular twister board - the SPYC version. A tarp with thick circles of Ketchup, Mustard, Mayonnaise, and Pickle Relish...

What's wrong Katie, you didn't want a mustard facial???

The week progressed with lots more fun things and a lot of heat. We will not talk about what happened in the counselor vs Sr. High soccer challenge, but I can say that in the rematch the counselors won handily...

Go Fernando? Can you pick him out of the crowd?