July 4 – “Happy New Year”

We are home.  For a few more hours at least.  I couldn't get any kind of internet signal at camp, so I put up the posts for each night when we got home.  I know the "poetry" (actually it was a song) I posted last night might be hard for some to understand, but for those who went to youth camp, pretty much all of it tells a story.  And of course there were many other anecdotes that never made it into the song.  Like the fact that the camp was under a fire watch when we arrived.  There was a huge fire burning near Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Glorieta, where we were, was not in danger as long as the wind kept blowing in the direction it was.  We did get a lot of ash in the air, though.  It had kind of a hazy effect.  Made for some beautiful sunsets.  I guess the sunrises were pretty, too, but I couldn't see them as well.    Yes, I was awake in time.  I had to get up early and sing at the top of my lungs to help the rest of the dorm greet the new day.  I was quite well-liked by the end of the week, as you might imagine.  The last night I was told that the guys at the end of our hall got up around 3:30 and started banging on the walls to wake me up.  I vaguely recall rousing up briefly and wondering why a helicopter was flying over.  But I went right back to sleep.  Ah, the blissful, yet hidden, benefits of taking hearing aids out at night.    Today we have to take our niece Taylor to Bay City to meet up with her parents.  She seems to have had a great time.  Good enough that she wants to go back to camp again next year.  Wednesday we travel to Austin to perform a baby dedication for some close friends there.  We'll come back Thursday in time to greet Josh and Christi.  They are coming for a quick visit.  Then I guess when they leave Saturday we will head back to Bay City and pick up Taylor and her sister Cheyenne for our week of Vacation Bible School at Seaside.  That's as far as I have been able to get in my planning.  And I'm not even sure of that.  I have been at camp for the last week.  That does something to your brain.  Meanwhile, I'll try to get caught up on some work and do what running around can be done in a major tourist area on a holiday when there is so much traffic that you can hardly get into WalMart's parking lot.  And if you can't get to WalMart, you are pretty much paralyzed in Galveston …. Happy New Year.   Proverbs 17:1 says, "Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife."   Father, bring your peace into the lives of the students who experienced camp last week.  Amen.