Fun Weekend at Forest Home

I went to Junior High Winter Camp at Forest Home last weekend with the middle-school group from College Avenue Baptist Church. It has been a long time since I’ve bunked down with a group of middle-school boys as a cabin counselor. Other than being seriously sleep-deprived, I had a wonderful time. The camp was packed with kids (not sure how many but my guess would be around 500 kids and their leaders). We also had some spectacular winter weather–torrential rain on Friday, hail on Saturday, then snow on Sunday morning. The kids loved it.

The highlight of the weekend for me was being able to watch our son Nathan in action. He is the junior high director for Forest Home and besides planning the program, supervising the staff and solving problems that come up, he is a terrific up-front person who leads most of the meetings and activities. I had his job some 40+ years ago and never did it so well. I am so proud of him.

The speaker for the weekend was Marko (Mark Oestreicher), an old friend and the former president of Youth Specialties. Even though I’ve always known Marko for his expertise and experience in junior high ministry, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him actually speak to junior high kids. He did a great job. He’s obviously very comfortable with them and the kids connect with him easily. The boys in my cabin group had lots of good things to say about what they learned from Marko’s teaching.

Alas, I woke up Monday morning with a cold. It’s great to be back doing youth ministry again!