Authentic Faith 2007

Day 1
We arrived at Camp Walk on Water (WOW) at about 2 pm on Tuesday. To the kids' surprise, we were attacked by a group of college kids dressed as twinkies, hula girls or guys, and just general craziness. We found our dorm and unpacked. By the way, this was the type of dorm where all 50something bunk beds are in 1 room. And there's about 5 showers and toilets. We shared a dorm with Fianna Hills Baptist Church and First Baptist in Van Buren. I started out in the dorms with the girls, so that meant Cayson was in there too! He loved being in there with all those girls!

The kids had to take a swim test and then it was off to dinner. It was actually pretty good. Lasagna! After that we had small group time, and then worship. Our worship band was Pottersfield, we had an improv comedy group named Isaac Improv, and our speaker was Dr. Alex Himaya from The Church at Battle Creek in Tulsa. Tuesday night Dr Himaya gave his testimony, which is awesome. I didn't get to stay at worship because Cayson was getting pretty loud. I had him asleep in the dorm, but when all the girls came in, he woke up. I spent Tuesday night worrying that he would wake up crying and wake up the girls.

Day 2
One of the youth ministers figured out a way for me to stay in the lodge with Cayson...which is more like a hotel room. Needless to say, I was much more comfortable the rest of the week!

Breakfast was decent. I ended up just eating cereal, which I learned later was off-brand. However, I decided I liked the off-brand Frosted Flakes better than Kellogg's!

Next, we were off to the worship center to watch a NOOMA video, created by Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church. This video was to help them with their quiet time. In their camp books, there were questions about the video and after they watched the video they spread out all over camp to do their quiet time.

During morning worship time, Dr. Himaya taught them how to do a quiet time. This particular morning, he told them how he does his quiet time. He uses a system called ENSPEC. Which means:

• Example for me to follow.


• New thought about God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit.


• Sin for me to confess.


• Promise for me to claim.


• Error for me to avoid.


• Command for me to obey.

Lunch was hot dogs. Cayson ate a whole one, without the bread!

At 1:30 was Rec. Each church was given a color. We were the pink team. We were competing against the other churches in the areas of team spirit, encouragement, and servanthood. Our rec games for the day were dodgeball, broom ball (like hockey, but with a kickball and brooms), and flicker ball (like ultimate frisbee, but with a football and in the endzone there was a target with a hole in it that you had to put the football through.) We swept all our games for the day!

Free time was 3-6 pm. During free time, campers could swim in the lake, which had some amazing "toys", or climb the rock wall, do the zip line, etc. Check out the website to see all the neat stuff.

Dinner was fried chicken, I believe. Cayson ate all Shaun's green beans.

We had small group time before worship. Each church divided their kids into groups of ten for this (and rec as well). For us, we brough 12 so we were a small group anyway. During this time, Shaun talked to the kids out of Jeremiah.

In worship, Dr. Himaya preached on the cross. For several years, he's been studying medical books, history, etc to found out the medical side of Jesus' death. This was such an awesome message. It is really a blog post in itself. This is the night we had 2 of our kids come to know Christ.

After worship we had church time to talk about the message, etc. Then we had fireworks over the lake. (This was on July 4.)

Ok, I realize this has gotten to be a long post so I'll break them up. Stay tuned for accounts of day 3, 4, and 5!