Of Mice and Middle Schoolers.

What was supposed to be 16 hours of brain clobbering video training magically poofed itself into 24 hours.

Welcome to being on salary.

Kidding, but my brain is donezo fo sho. It's been two days of absolute mayhem. But I'm feeling quite peaceful, quite confident considering...considering the information overload and the complete lack of experience that I had prior to this 24 hour training sesh. I have the knowledge, now I just need to hone the skills.

Praise the Lord, I have 6 weeks to practice at camp before camp actually starts. I really am so incredibly excited for this summer, for this opportunity, for this alternative direct form of ministry that I get to be a part of. I get to creatively package up the Gospel and send it home with kids. What cooler job could there be? Ok, maybe getting paid copious amounts of money to travel around the world writing stories might be slightly cooler, but hey, this is pretty phenomenal. I don't think that I've stressed enough how grateful and absolutely blessed I feel to have been trusted and believed in to this extent. I have a HUGE job this summer. A crucially pivotal astronomically important job. That was rather redundant but I just wanted to help you understand the amount of stress I'm going to be under...so that you might think of me and pray for me, for this ministry, for my fellow video interns, for my equipment, for my safety, and my sanity.

So I decided I really like Frontier Ranch. Not only did I have some pretty significant spiritual encounters here as a camper 6 yrs ago, I had some pretty monumental moments this time around as well.

Monumental moment #1...finding a YoungLife shirt in the store with a giant donkey on the front. And then realizing that I get 20% off of it, because yes, that's right, I'm on YoungLife staff.

Monumental moment #2...witnessing a middle school Jesus battle chant. There's a middle school camp sharing the same vicinity as us, and yes, they are delightful to observe. At dinner today a battle cry broke out just after the meal commenced and I almost wanted to jump into the monotony. "We love Jesus, yes we do, We love Jesus, how bout you?!" Escalating louder, and louder, and louder. You might not think that pre-pubescent middle schoolers could get that loud, oh, but they can. My favorite was the boy who appeared to be not much older than 10, claiming that he was an eighth grader. Almost dropped the peach drank right out of my mouth on that one.

Monumental moment #3...watching the mouse skitter past my peripheral vision about 5 feet away from me. Now I know my home isn't the only ranch that has rodent issues. We're not alone Janelle! I won't even dare pull up the blankets of that bed over there searching for the nest. This time it's not my problem. Except for the fact that I still have to sleep one more night in this place. Damn. Perhaps I'll roll my body up in the two, not just one, camp blankets that were provided with my bed pack. Except these heated floors mixed with our inability to adjust the thermostat, make it about as hot (oh my gosh, the mouse just ran by again) as the oven when you're baking biscuits, except I'm not a biscuit, I'm just an exhausted video intern trying to escape the unpredictable rodents I'm momentarily residing with.

It's a hard knock life, I tell ya.

Spending a weekend with middle schoolers has really got me thinkin' about bein' a Wyldlife leader sometime in the distant future. I think I could have a good time with those kiddos.

And now I'm going to escape while I still can, before the mouse grabs his posse and begins his own Jesus battle cry all over my weary body. I don't think I could even fight back at this point. So instead I'll go play shuffle board with my new techy friends.

Peeeeeeace ouuuttttt!!