First Day of Bball Camp!!

Was not quite what we expected.  Nobody showed.  We stood at our table, thrilled to not be wearing ties, for an hour, and actually gave away infinitely more applications than we received (Which is just simple, clever mathematics: 4/0 = infinity).  How do you rebound from that?  What does that mean?  Are we doing something wrong?

Backtrack to yesterday.  Something that I'm pretty sure none of us have thought about yet (including myself until now), or at least haven't vocalized yet.  The Heck's church, which we've been attending, had a guest speaker for their Sunday morning.  His name: Phil Vischer.  I'll let you google that and be thrilled for all of us.  If laziness is settled deep in your core and you didn't do that, I'm sorry but I'm gonna push you to do that.  I wouldn't do him and his story justice here.  His life lesson was for us.  Upon coming to the brink of making the Christian Disney, Phil was wrongly sued and lost, ending his dreams of using the often abused American media as an avenue to teach the Bible to children.  I can't speak for who Phil Vischer was before that corporate meltdown, but while speaking to us, he was definitely sincere, and thus I believe that Veggietales was exactly that; a Christ-focused calling, not a money making scheme.  Which therefore marked the reason for his confusion at its collapse.  "God, this was a good thing.  Why would you let this fail, maybe even make it fail?  My dream was Your dream!" was the gist of his inner chaos.  And after fighting depression for several years he came to a marvelous conclusion: "God doesn't want my dream, He wants my soul."  His finest example was Noah.  Noah built the ark at the tender age of 500.  He was NOT planning to make the first animal cruise ship and save the world for those 499 years prior, he was waiting on the Lord.  It was not his dream that made him special to God, but his obedience (John 14:15).  The Bible is not a story of people saying "God can't steer a parked car, I gotta DO something so God acknowledges me and can make much of me!"  It sounds silly in that light, doesn't it, and I know it to be true of me.  The Bible is a story of steadfast and devout people who were patient and humble until God told them to rise.

Could I be too anxious to do a good thing, and not content resting in the arms of my Father?  Have I been chasing a resume builder for here or heaven, instead of realizing that God prizes simple pure things over things that look extravagant but are empty, or even mostly full?  Have I been trying to show God how He could bring some good instead of asking how He makes all things work together for our good.

We'll keep you posted on the rest of the week.  Thank you for your prayers, please continue to do that simply and purely.  Please pray:

• First, praise and honor your King.  He is good to you and good to us, and we would hate to have you forget that in the midst of earthly disappointments
• That God makes sense of this latest letdown
• That we continue to be unified to and considerate of each other as a team
• That we optimize the situations God puts us in, especially if they are not what we anticipate
• Taking responsibility and not shifting blame for our camp’s shortcomings
• Our future (hopefully?) campers’ hearts to be ready for Biblical teaching
• For our hearts, minds, and selves to have prepared worthwhile Biblical teaching for these future standard bearers
• That God & Souls (especially our own) would be a far more important relationship than God and our dreams
• For my competitive pride to surrender

Still finding things that we didn't know we didn't know,

Tim, Gabe, Chad, and Spince

P.S. I posted this soon after Spencer posted one of his own, so make sure you don't miss that.  Also, I think this is the most recent picture of all of us for all you worried mothers out there:

Enjoying a Tigers Game with Rob (Grove City Athletics Department) & his friend Emily