First Day of Summer?

oh my, life since graduation...wow
So I chilled at at my Wauseon home for a week, had my last piano recital with Mrs. Bruce on Sunday and headed for Camp Luz as soon as that was over.
For the first week I trained with Everett and Heidi for Outpost camp (Tim is doing outpost as well, but he was still doing school stuff...sad day)! On Wednesday of that week the three of us were joined by some other uber cool people and trained on the Ropes Course --Complete with a test from Mandrew-- Everett also got us all certified in Basic First Aid and CPR from the Red Cross. Woot Woot! Gotta love them there classes.
So when I graduated I was uber excited to be done with schooling and tests for a while...so much for that idea. Add Mandrew's test to all of the Red Cross tests and you come up with 5 tests in one week of summer. But it's all good, many memories compliment the week.
Most everybody else came out for regular staff training June 9. Talk about being mega excited! really missed my camp family and enjoyed the reunion and the time spent getting to know the first year staff.
I had hoped to head off to camp and leave the rest of my thoughts behind me, but God had other plans. My last Wednesday night spent with my youth group was a big thing the pulled me down. Some people came in to pray over and prophesies for us. Most of what they said settled with me, but there was one comment that slid into the mix about my college major that shook me up. God and I spent a lot of time discussing my college choice and major. So that with several other things made my time rough, but good. God has been stretching, bending, breaking, and re-shaping every part of me. With His craftsmanship, this current restoration will be amazing to look back upon in hindsight.

I was planning on leaving staff training Friday evening to be ready to leave with my youth group Saturday at 7:30AM; however, that did not happen. My mother told be to head back to camp and wait out a bad storm that I was going to have to drive in from Wooster to Norwalk (Wauseon had awful storms that whole week, some with 100mph winds. She didn't want me to be caught up in a similar storm). So I made a u-turn and headed back for camp. washed my laundry, packed a lunch, and all that jazz. --Side note, thank you to whoever folded my laundry, that meant a lot to me, and lifted my spirits.--So I left Saturday morning at 4:15am after 2 hours of sleep for a 3 hour drive that ended in the Church parking lot. I stopped for coffee, but nobody would come to the counter to take my order so I got back in my car and used good-ol' water to keep me awake. My wonderful parents came to the church to say say hello and goodbye and off I went with my youth group to Reading, PA.
We spent the week at New Hope Community Center, a church that is being refurbished. I will admit, I did not want to leave camp and go. Hindsight, even though the week was quite unorganized, God worked. We did a little work in the church, cleaned a park and some streets, and enjoyed some street ministry, but what I loved the most was just being out in the city with the people! A group of us went out to find ice cream and after asking several people for directions found the place only to discover that the store clerks only spoke Spanish, (which didn't surprise us, we lived that week in a Spanish-speaking area, and were the minority) God placed one man who spoke a tiny bit of English in the store and he translated for us. I asked him which flavor was best and he recommended the coconut...it was quite tasty! The ice cream was tasty and only $1, so several of us happily found our way back to the store for more ice cream. Our translator was there again and this time I had some cheesecake, and then a short conversation with my new friend!
God placed Melanie, my youth pastor, all around me that week and enabled her to help me process and let go of the prophetic words that were weighing heavily on my spirit. One tid-bit of wisdom that helped a great deal was "if it doesn't settle with your spirit; it isn't from God." She reminded me to test the words against the scriptures, and then my own heart. Thursday evening Ralf, the local youth pastor, shared with several other men, and a woman, adding their wisdom. At the end they had some prophetic time as well. I sat in my seat most of the time just watching and not wanting to go forward and be hurt again. I was praying to God telling Him that I did not desire to spend 3+ weeks working on clean up again. My filter of truth was in place and I just sat back praying and watching. Tessa approached me and said she was sent to comfort me. I wasn't going to stand by myself and take another hit from something that was/is suppose to be of God. Tessa and a few others offered to stand with me, and they did. The words spoken settled with my soul, as I carefully fed them through the filter God and I set up. God is good.
We woke early this morning and headed home, after 10 hours in a Van, with a 2-year old that was running a fever (God, please bring peace to Becca) we were back in Wauseon.
This weekend has sleep, laundry, graduation parties, and Libbey's benefit before I head off to Camp Luz again!
God Bless, and happy first official day of summer!