Uhm, wow!

After a long afternoon nap to try and recover from a week of not-so-much-sleep at camp, Jess and I grabbed Subway for dinner and headed to the CCAC athletic fields with probably a thousand-or-so others to see Stellar Kart, Mute Math, and Jeremy Camp wind down Warsaw’s Pro-Life Music Festival.

The highlight for me was Mute Math’s set – I took a ton of photos (available here) and got pretty close to the stage for this set. I am embarrassed to say that I have yet to post just how impressed with Mute Math’s music I am until tonight – the live show was one of the best I’ve ever seen! Incredible stuff!

After Mute Math, the crowd waited a few moments for Jeremy Camp’s band to set up – they did some rocking of their own, too! Jeremy’s brother plays guitar in the band and Jeremy’s dad, Tom – a pastor in Lafayette was in the audience and came up and played harmonica on a great rendition of “Jesus Loves Me”. Standing and swaying with my wife in a worship-full atmosphere tonight will definitely leave a permanent memory on my brain. God has blessed me!

We left camp this morning before 10AM – a record for the three years that I’ve been on this district! I did a LOT of the AV-BOOTH cleanup last night, so we had less to do this morning – and our girls were ready when we were this morning to pack up the van and head back to Warsaw.

The week at camp was incredible.

Jess and I both remarked about how much fun this past week has been – and how we’re more excited about next year because of the blast we had this year!

Jeremy Summers will be back next year to speak at our Senior High Camp – that will be a great thing as well!

We’re glad to be back here in Warsaw, and excited about leaving again tomorrow morning for Indianapolis – where we’ll spend the greater part of the week at our buddy Kory’s home. We’re looking forward to spending time with him – when it allows – and time together touring ourselves around Indianapolis.

Tonight – Jeremy Camp plays at the Pro-Life Music Festival at 10PM – we’ll be there. Mute Math plays before him, too! I can’t wait! For now – time to take a NAP!

The “first wave” of camp pictures are available here.

Sitting in the Indiana Wesleyan University library this HOT afternoon.

Jess and I drove over here with Glen and Jeremy to drop off the church van for an air-conditioning problem. Turns out that the FORD dealership couldn’t get us in before the weekend – we’re leaving camp on Saturday morning… So, we’ll drive back to Warsaw with sporadic air conditioning. Fun!

We’re trying to catch a much-needed movie break this afternoon. Trying to fit in “War of the Worlds” this afternoon here in Marion, but not sure now that it’s all going to work out.

The free-time that we do have at camp sure is precious!

We had a great meeting with the “camp committee” today about how things are going this year and what we’d like to see happen for next year – this is the first time in three years that we’ve had such a meeting while camp was actually in progress! So – I’m already excited to see where we take camp next year!

Had a quick problem with needing to deposit money that’s on my church office desk while I’m still here in Fairmount. Thankfully, Deana – one of our church secretary’s came to my rescue and is – as I type this – driving to the bank to deposit said monies. NOTE TO SELF: next time, it’s NOT okay to NOT get advanced on weekly pay when I’m not going to be in Warsaw. Ugh. I hate money.

Jess just looked across from her computer cubby-hole and said, “Your mom sent me a recipe.” Interesting.

So, here I am, once again at Tree of Life!

However, this time I’m using their wonderful iMacs here in the corner. Glen and I booked it over here to buy a last-minute illustration dvd for tonight’s rally. We even had the privilege of driving Jeremy Summer’s JEEP from Fairmount to Marion to get here.

I’m now in love with the feeling of driving a JEEP.

Tonight’s rally should be interesting – I’m serving on a panel of adults (how is this possible?) who will answer pre-asked questions on Sexual Purity. We gave the teens a note-card to write their questions earlier this morning and tonight we will attempt to answer what we can!

Jess and I picked up the finished camp t-shirts earlier this afternoon and so far they are a hit on campus. I’m always nervous at what kind of reaction something I’ve designed will get.

By the way – each trip to Marion for internet access/lunch has been a much-needed/useful trip. It’s not that I’m spending more time OFF campus than on, I just have to drop in here from time to time to get updated song lyrics and such – so those of you who think I’m skipping out on camp are wrong!

Something funny happened last night at camp – Jess was cornered by some of my youth pastor “buddies” and told that at approximately 3:30AM this morning, our cabin would be entered by these “buddies” of mine and that she should be appropriately dressed because they would be waking me up in a fit of early-morning noise-making/video taping.

This happened like they said, however, my wonderful wife gave me the heads-up minutes before I slipped into my deep sleep – enough time for me to make sure I was “descent” for this upcoming video-taped episode!

Good times at Fairmount.

Sitting in the same seat as yesterday, here at Tree of Life after a wonderful lunch at La Chareada – here in Marion.

Dave Mason is sitting next to me telling me to post links everyday so that he could visit my site and enjoy such linkage.

We had a HUGE thunderstorm today at camp – lost power a bunch of times and the rain was pretty incredible.

This morning, Rob Tippey spoke about sharing faith without fear – he did a great job, but once again I realized just how much we, who listen to Rob Bell (Mars Hill) sermons all day, everyday sound so much like Rob Bell these days…