Spring Staff

I'm not even sure how I decided to work at spring staff at Winkler Bible Camp. I knew about it for a long time, but I figured if I worked at camp for the spring I would get sick of it by the time summer rolled around. But I couldn't really find work anywhere else. So I applied, and the next week I began working. And it ended up being the best decision I could have made for my spring! I usually get up at 7am, begin work at 8 and our day is finished at about 8:30pm or 10pm, depending on the day. For the first few days we, as staff, did a lot of maintenance work because no school groups had booked yet. We managed to pull loads of weeds in the pouring rain, unearth and remove massive rocks from barren pastures and random junkyards, clean, sweep and mop tons of dirty bathrooms, mow the entire campsite a few times over, varnish 10 cabins worth of siding, clean miles of ditches while finding and spearing mice, and do absolutely anything else they could think of. Cleaning ditches was especially fun because we (my friend Caitlyn and I) found car parts including a sweet hubcap, a rubber Toyota thing, and a shiny red Pontiac symbol that we kept, cleaned, and hung in our room as decorations. But as May got further along we switched gears from maintenance work to running activities for the school groups that rented the camp for their school field trips.

Now in June our days are filled with school groups coming and going, most staying for two or three days. Sometimes there are up to 4 groups a day with 150 kids here at one time. It's crazy, loud and chaotic occasionally, but that's what it's all about. Caitlyn became the head wrangler so it's been exciting getting up early with her and rounding up all the horses from the pasture and saddling them before our early morning meetings. As for the activities, I've been teaching kids canoeing including paddling techniques and procedures and how not to get stranded on the other side of the lake, belaying and harnessing hundreds of kids at the 43 ft. climbing wall, running around exhausted playing soccer or 'steal the bacon' during group games, sending shrieking kids down our 350' zipline, making sure no one is breaking their limbs while trying to avoid touching the ground on the winding obstacle course, giving pushes to kids on the tarzan rope that end up jumping into the creek and wanting to do it over and over again, leading Team Development Activities (TDA's) to teach kids how to help and encourage others even when they get frustrated while being blindfolded, leading scavenger hunts and running to all corners of the camp helping them find the acorns, 3 leafed clovers, and shells they need, instructing kids how to build fires without using 50 matches (even while it is raining cats and dogs) and to make bannock that actually tastes good, dressing up crazy and chasing kids for the night games like Impossible Molecule, helping at the beach by supervising and swimming back and forth to the watertrampoline for hours for the kids that enjoy swimming in -30 degree weather with a 30km/h wind, teaching them how to use a GPS so that they walk in the right directions to find letters scattered all over the camp... it's been so much FUN!! Ok, well sometimes it's been rainy and cold, and it's frustrating when campers tip three of their canoes at the same time in the middle of the lake on purpose so I have to frantically go rescue them...lol but the staff here are incredible and can put a smile on your face whatever the circumstance!

A cool moment was when I got to stay in the cabins overnight with the school groups because they didn't have enough leaders. One of the girls ended up asking me about my lifestory so I got to share it with them, along with telling them about God. Because it is only rental season for the camp we are actually not allowed to openly express our faith with them unless they have asked about it. In this way it is a lot different then summer camp, but still great nonetheless. The next morning, all the girls ended up begging me to get them bibles to read! It was really neat! And I have so many more stories! maybe that's why I created a blog :)

Yes, we are really busy, and don't have a lot of free time, but I can't think of anything else I would rather be doing right now! :)