Day 4: It's working

"It's like going out to sea. You don't know where you are, but you want to keep going."

—Keanu Reeves

Praying together during the morning program

Greetings to the outside world from Camp White Eagle!

 We sang The Star-Spangled Banner during lunch!

YOU'RE WONDERING ABOUT THE WEATHER

Cats and dogs are plummeting out of the sky. Thankfully, our morning was cool and the afternoon was sunny, but at dusk, God decided it was time to water the plants. Putting safety first, we cancelled the starlight devotional and got everyone back into their cabins before it got bad.

YOU'RE WONDERING IF YOUR KIDS ARE REGISTERING ANYTHING

They are. Underneath the cauldron of insanity that is Explore camp, the fire of God is heating things up.

Dig it: So it's dinner time, and I'm sitting at the very end of a long table. Tonight was salsbury steak, which was excellent; I've only had two pieces and I'm desperate for 3 or 4 more.

Way down at the other end, I see that some of the boys are drinking Tabasco sauce again. One guy, after gulping his, slams the bottle down onto the table.

A tiny little drop of Tabasco goes flying off the rim of the bottle.

Straight into the eye of the boy sitting across from him, who was not even involved in the hot sauce madness. In the real world, this would sound pretty crazy; at Camp White Eagle, it's another day, another disaster.

Important detail: dessert has just come out of the kitchen.

Tabasco Victim starts spazzing out. He leaves the table to go wash his eye off in the bathroom — right as the carrot cake arrives.

The carrot cake moves around from the far side of the table to my end. Sitting next to me is Courteous Camper, who grabs a piece of cake and passes it along. He then looks up, at the empty seat where Tabasco Victim had been sitting, and sees that his plate is empty.

"Does that guy have any carrot cake?" Courteous Camper yells to the other end.

It's always really loud in the dining hall, and no one at the other end hears him.

"Does that guy have any carrot cake!?" Courteous Camper yells again. He gets a response this time: a few shrugs.

Courteous Camper puts his own slice of carrot cake onto a plate and has it passed down to Tabasco Victim's seat. He wanted to make sure the guy got dessert.

Sometimes, people ask me why I keep coming back to camp year after year. People will be like "You know, self-punishment doesn't actually get you into Heaven."

Episodes like what I saw this evening keep me coming back.

Epilogue: Washing his eye out only spread the sauce around and made it worse. A counselor took him to Nurse Karla, who did her thing as usual and had him hooked up momentarily.

During this whole scramble, I'd gotten up to check on Tabasco Victim. As I walked from one end of my table to another — behold, one of my campers still has an untouched piece of salsbury steak on his plate!!  I ask him what the scoop is and if he has any immediate plans for his meat. He says no, so I snatch it.

But he issues me a warning: he doused it in Tabasco before deciding he didn't really want it.

Whatever dude.

SLIDE SHOW SONG #1: "Coming Home" by Dirty Money