June something, 2009

I honestly don't know the date. 

My first week of camp is over and thank God. It was the roughest week I can remember but as rough as it was, God moved. 

Sunday all the kids come and sign into camp around 4 in the afternoon. I found out the day before I wouldn't be in Grizzly Yurt, I would be a counselor for the overflow cabin at Outpost. Outpost is a couple small buildings for bunks and then a long building that acts as a common room. They're about a mile from camp and you can reach them in a truck but they make you hike the trail. And a Yurt is like a cabin but is really a big tent. I'll post pictures someday. 

I'm not technically a counselor but we had so many campers this week, they needed extra help. So the real counselor (we call them shepherds) was Blaze. And another co-counselor was David (who had other obligations and wasn't around much). 

We had eight kids to start with, ranging from 14 to 17 years old. By the end of the week, we had five left, due to attrition. 

Mostly it was me and Blaze and the campers. Eight shouldn't have been such a challenge but oh my God were they. 

The first camper we lost was Willie who has anger issues and wanted to punch another kid, Jonathan. Plus another kid, Bo. They almost fought so Willie left and joined another cabin. He flat out announced he loved Playboy and watched porn all the time. I didn't know what to do with such a bold confession. He also confessed he had just punched his step dad in the face because he thought he was beating his mind. Willie frequently jumped the gun when he was angry. Shoot first ask questions later. That sort of guy. 

Dylan was one of the older campers. If any of the campers led the others, he did. Calm and collected, he seemed like a good guy on the outside but I could tell there was more going on in his life. He had a fakeness about him. I don't know if it was because he was detached from his world or what but he lacked genuineness and I was never sure if he was being honest or not.

Jonathan. Oh man, this guy tested the patience of everyone he knew. A colossal wreck of a child, full of anger and dark hatred. A small kid, with blonde hair to his neck, I didn't initially think anything of him. He looks normal. But the kid had a knack for pissing the other campers off. He would constantly hit another kid, Jared and then tempt everyone else to hit him. Whenever I talked to him, he would look off in the distance and find something fascinating about trees or birds. If he did look at me, I would swear the calm exterior of the kid held a dark, brooding heart, plotting what part of my chest to stab first. Whenever I told him to do something, he was so slow to respond I thought there might be something wrong with him. But there isn't, he just enjoys disobedience. He also lies a lot. He eventually attacked Jared for no reason I can name and I yanked him out into the rain and towards the Office. Blaze took over instead. He spent a lot of time with him, listening and talking with Jonathan.

And then Trebor. If Jonathan was Blaze's project, Trebor was mine. Straight up 15  year old gangsta. Angry at the world. Angry at anything that made him less than comfortable. He rarely got excited about anything unless it was girls or violence. Most everything else was dull to him. He probably knows more about sex than I do. He told me he would miss my "whispering eye". I found out it means vagina. I truly do not understand why he said that. I talked him out of three separate fights and each time managed to talk reason and calm into him. One of the first times he tried to hit Jared and I caught it. I yelled and pulled him aside from the group and told them to go into the lodge. I still remember the conversation clearly:

"What is the matter with you? What's your problem that you have to hit someone else?"

"Man, I don't like him! I hate immature kids!"

"Oh, so you should respond to immaturity with immaturity."

"That ain't immaturity, he needs to shut his fucking mouth."

"He's a kid! Of course he's going to be immature! He's growing up, same as you. Why are you like this, angry and violent all the time?"

"I told you! I don't like immaturity..."

"No no no, I'm not talking about Jared. Forget him. What's going on at home, at school?"

"I don't know. Nothing man. Its just...."

"Just what?"

"Everything ends, man."

I was silent for a moment. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing good lasts. This week is going to end and then I have to go home again. Nothing lasts, I have to go home to the same bullshit. Same bullshit everyday. So what does it matter?"

I remember feeling an intense sense of truth and connection with Trebor. On the outside, Trebor seems like he's slow. But when you get him talking, you find an intelligent kid that can accurately describe his troubled world. 

We talked for a while more and told him about hope and how I found it. I told him that no matter what the world had done to him he had no right to create the same hell he lived in for others. We wrestled through a tough conversation and at the end Trebor was calmer but with the same angry heart etched into the lines of his face. His mouth curved into a constant line that suggests disgust and hate. 

I found Blaze and told him I needed a break. I went into the staff lounge in the ARC basement and wept deep tears. I heard his voice say over and over again, "Everything ends."

This post is exhausting me and there is so much to tell from the week that I don't have the time or energy to put here. I'll shorten it by saying by the end of it, Trebor was considering God. Jonathan left camp with seemingly no resolve. Bo came closer to God. Dylan was as fake as ever. Clayton may have been worse for the influence of the other campers. And Jared and Aaron seemed unaffected. I'm not sure what, if anything, we did could be called a success but by the end of the week, things were different. Not all of it was good, Trebor almost fought me an hour before his parents picked him up and Aaron retreated into himself and gave everyone a blank, unblinking stare that frightened me. But on the whole, despite the exhausting mess of the week, God moved. 

After all the campers left, me, Blaze and David were almost giddy. All the energy and life had been sucked out of us but with them gone, we felt alive again. David and Blaze grinned and alternated between jokes and laughter. I laughed almost maniacally, uncontrollably. Someone said, "Those kids broke Barry." That's probably true, but in a different way than I think they would suppose.