My adventure started when pondering about my dreams and where I wanted to go in life. I secretly went off to a camp recruitment fair and got my job at Camp DeWolfe. (I pulled out of Camp interviews last year after loosing my Mum to cancer in late 2012 and didn’t feel ready.) It was a moment of mixed feelings, not knowing if it was going to be a good idea to leave my job and risk no wages for the summer and maybe after. I was so nervous handing in my notice, and was blown away at how well my boss took it. He congratulated me and wished me well, this started to make me realize I probably had made a good decision and began to out every fear and doubt I had in my mind, wishing my mum could be around to support me. Fear set in at the airport knowing there was no going back, I gave my Dad an awkward hug and went through the barrier, walking away from everything that was familiar to pursue my ‘adventure’.
By the time we, 9 Brits and a Kiwi, arrived at camp we had already started bonding as a group, the friendship I missed that I had with my best friend, my Mum, sharing more than time together but the love of God and Jesus. She guided me spiritually for so much of my life and in loosing her I have lost a part of me, but here at camp, the location and people make me realize how easy life can be. I feel the moment I got here I offered up all my troubles to God and allowed myself to fulfill my life here. Back in England I had been dragging this sadness and the need to fill my mothers space to support my family without releasing the pain I really felt.
The first day of camp I got given my LIT girls, it was a moment knowing that I wanted to do good by God to teach them their own place in the world as a leader, whilst I wasn’t even sure where I stood as a leader myself in this situation. I now look back and a natural instinct took over and I became the person I needed to be, the person I thought I had lost. These amazing young people quickly became my family, for 5 weeks we went through every emotion a family would and I cherished them all like my own children, funny that they started calling me ‘Mom”. I appreciated where my role was in their lives at camp and that will stay with me forever.
We had a service down at the beach with Adventure Camp, this was a time I recognized I had never allowed God to help me out, I had banished all help from others knowing that no one on earth could relieve the pain. We wrote on a stone a message to God to heal someone or us and then threw it into the sound to offer to God and release. Since then I have had a slow release of my burdens. I take my situation in a positive way, but now I know that it is true rather than an untrue emotion put on to show others.
This has been the most amazing experience I have partaken in and it has exceeded every expectation I naively had. Nothing prepared me for this many life lessons, true friendship, a new family and most wonderfully an enriched love of God and his creation.
By Roz Bryan
Summer Camp LIT Leader
Roz and some LITs