Boot Camp (june 18-22)

Now starts a part of my summer that I looked forward to for a long time! Every summer my church does something called the Great Adventure (maybe my faithful church homies have heard of it?). The Great Adventure is the main outreach HCBC does – it is mission trips and ‘back yard bible clubs’ (our version of VBS). I have gone to a Hill Country Bible Church for a long time, and I even became a christian at a bybc; and I have an older brother that has done the GA for 3 years now. So I was looking forward to my first year of bybc’s to say the least! Pretty quick after my family got back from France at the end of April, we started talking and thinking about and preparing for it in the youth group! And in June, we headed out to Waco for our week of training.

BootCamp was an eye-opening and life changing experience for me. It was all new to me, and there was about 150 teenagers that look forward to getting to teach BYBCs all year, at one camp for almost a week. We were pumped. It was also, on top of the bonding and teaching and practice for the actual clubs, my first time to stay at a camp at all (I know, I know, I am so deprived, haha). The girls from my youth group and Krista were all in a cabin, and it was like the 8 of us were a family of sisters. Every day we got closer, and every night we stayed up talking until at least midnight even though lights-out was 11. Krista and I shared a room, and our late night conversations, (whether I was conscious or not, apparently) were so cool. It was fun for me because I have three brothers, so it was cool to get to be girly all the time in our cabin. Learning the material was fun, and the practice was a blast. When it got to the last day…..Boo! At the night meetings, the skits were hilarious, the teaching was awesome, and the worship was indescribable to me. It is amazing to me that so many teenagers could and would come together just to worship God – through singing, learning, and going out to tell kids all over Austin how much God loved them. BootCamp was a blast, but it was intense at times. One of the most amazing times I can ever remember was on our prayer day; as our teams, by ourselves, and then ending up with our whole youth group we prayed for about 3 and a half hours. After we had prayed as teams for almost all of our time, my youth group ended up on top of this hill that had a trail for hiking it. It was no mountain, but the view was beautiful, and there was a good breeze up there. And all 18 of us just got in a circle and started praying, one by one. When we were done, I think all of us were so charged; we knew that God WAS going to do incredible things, and we were so ready we could hardly wait! By the last night of worship, the whole room was jumping to “Undignified”, and that was awesome. BootCamp is one of my most favorite memories ever.