you will never believe this...

my staff never ceases to amaze me, whether it's in their ability to lead bible study, their natural ability with kids, their lack of natural ability with kids, their way of challenging kids, their ways of challenging me...the list goes on, but what happened at 4:00 this morning probably takes the cake.

so i'm sleeping soundly in my nice bed, enjoying the sleep and looking forward to sleeping in (that has become one of my very favorite things, that doesn't happen very often!) when my phone rings. i don't recognize the number, and i'm not on call, so i think about not answering it. luckily, i decided to answer it and see what was up. one of my staff members, we'll call him chris, is calling me and says something like "i drove my car into a lake, everyone is ok." i'm in a daze because it's 4 am and i ask him some questions. turns out that he literally drove his car into fayette county power plant lake. the police were there, the tow truck was on it's way, and luckily everyone was safe.

later, i start piecing together the WHOLE story. apparently he was hanging out at camp and decided he wanted to go "read." i use that in quotation marks because the staff is not allowed to drink or to smoke onsite. he has denied being under the influence of anything, but i'm still suspicious. he decided to drive to this lake, which is only about 10 minutes from camp. he's never been there before, not sure how he found it (i've never been there before either). so he goes to read at the lake and ends up finishing his book sometime between 2:30 and 4 am and decides to drive around. well, this lake is just like any other state park - there's a ranger station and then a parking lot and then a boat ramp. apparently he thought the boat ramp was a road. of course he claims he was going the speed limit (20 mph) and before he knew it, he was in the water. luckily, his window was down (making me think he was smoking, which is allowed, i don't have a problem with that, but he neglected to tell me that part) so he grabbed his checkbook and his cell phone and jumped out the open driver's side window.

so, it's now about 3:30 am (from what i can gather) and there are fishermen out on the lake. they hear the commotion and come over to ask if anyone else is in the car. luckily he was alone and by this point he is on dry land. they call 911 and get the local police out to the site. then they call the tow truck, and then he calls me. after i hung up with him, i rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, thinking that it's his time off, he can do what he wants, and i'm not responsible. then, after i thought it through, i realized that his family lives 9 hours away in el paso, i'm probably the only one who knows about this, so i should go be moral support for him. so i call him back and and figure out exactly where he is and then drive out to meet him.

on my drive out there, i'm thinking about how slow i'm going to go when i get there to make sure i don't run my car into the water as well. well, when i get there, there are a couple of cop cars, a tow truck and lots of lonley fishermen that are rubbernecking. needless to say, i didn't crash MY car into the water. at this point the first tow truck had tried to drag his car out of the water, but only managed to pull off his bumper. the tow truck driver is drenched and we are now sitting around waiting for another truck to show up. we're sitting around and sitting around and finally the other tow truck shows up. the driver of this tow truck is much younger than the first one, and he is already dressed in swimming trunks and flip flops. he jumpes into the water and starts trying to hook the car to the truck. after a few dives, he finally gets a good hook and then they start pulling. well, probably because the first tow truck had spun the car or something, the car ends up coming out of the water upside down. that was a little freaky to see. AND by this point, the local fishermen literally have their video cameras and still cameras out documenting the entire thing. oh small town life...

as the second truck is working it's magic, one of the local authorities starts talking to me by saying "so you work for lutherhill?" and i'm like, well crap, there's no keeping this quiet. i say yes i do. and he just happens to be the parent of a college aged kid who hangs out with camp people all the time. fan-tastic. so by this point, the car comes out of the water, upside down, missing windows, and the top crunched in from the weight of the upside down car.

the wreckers take the car up to level ground, get it off of one truck, then use the other one to flip the car back over, and then put it up on the other truck. i missed this whole ordeal because we were busy picking up trash from the water. i'm kind of sad i missed that part, i'm sure that would be entertaining. so then we collect a few items from his car, put it into my car, and off we go.

the interesting thing is what has happened since we've been back. of course the story has spread. luckily, i called matt after chris called me. he was a little dazed too because of the early hour, and he ended up calling evan. well, evan accidentally dropped his cell phone into a toilet on friday, so he didn't have his cell phone. so when i finally wake up and see that evan is here at camp, i go tell him the story. he was a little upset that i didn't call him eariler, but whatever. i never do anything perfectly, so that was my mistake this time. so i tell him what happened and he's just shocked. after he processed it a little bit, he walked outside to call matt to chat with him about it (not realizing that matt already knew the story). he takes the emergency cell phone from me, calls matt, walks outside, and says "oh sh*t, i'll call you later" because he sees that justin's new puppy, maggie, has her head stuck in a fog light of a car just outside the dining hall. so justin, evan, emily (the owner of the car), nikita (justin's girlfriend), and clayton start trying to figure out how to get maggie's head out of the headlight socket. during this, clayton (who's dad works for lake) asks evan if he knew that someone from lutherhill drove their car into the lake that morning. yay small towns! (we ended up having to call the vet and cut the bumper apart to get the dog's head out of there).

other weird things that have happened during the last 12 hours. chris' story has changed from "i was driving on the road and it ended in the lake" to "i wasn't the only one who did this, they've had 3 other cases this year" to "they are supposed to have speed bumps and signs to mark a dock and i'm going to sue them for not having that!" to "my gps told me that i was on a road, so i was following it" and, instead of climbing out his OPEN driver's side window, he now is telling people he KICKED out the windshield in order to save his life. he's a good story teller - i'll give him that.

so, that was my excitement in the last 12 hours. luckily, two of our other staff members were driving home to baton rouge and their clutch gave out. i say luckily because that makes 3 bad things - the car in the lake, the clutch, and the dog, and bad things are supposed to come in 3s, right? RIGHT. hopefully the rest of this week will be smooth sailing! (not sinking...haha!) oh, and chris only has liability insurance....so he gets nothing for his car and has to pay $750 for towing.

we have family camp this week - i can't believe it's week 4 already! on wednesday i'm halfway done with the summer!

on another note, i bought some tom shoes and i'm really excited about them. learn about them at: http://www.tomsshoes.com/

hot hot hot!

today i spent the entire morning discussing camping philosophy with evan. then i went to lunch, only to discover that one of the people who was supposed to be doing kp (yes, only a group of 2 people do kp here...ask me about it later) was not even onsite, so i had to fill in for her. then i headed down to the ropes course to hang out at the top of the tower for 4 hours. after i was done with that, i climbed two telephone poles to take down the rest of the high ropes course. can i mention that it was hot outside and everything that you have to grab on to while climbing is metal? not a good situation. then i saw that the high for the day was 106. what a great day to be outside.

i can't wait to be in colorado and south dakota this weekend! oh, and then i got hit in the face with a water balloon. it was a complete accident and i didn't handle it well which made the thrower very emotional. i went over to talk to him later, and turns out he wasn't concerned at all about me being hurt, he was concerned about being fired. oh. my. goodness. lutherans are pretty big on the grace thing last time i heard.

and that was my day in a nut shell. hopefully tomorrow is ... different at least.

rainman!

this week lutherhill has our very own rainman! he's awesome and his name is paul. he reminds me of that movie. he def'nitely, def'nitely thinks the temperature will be 68 and def'nitely thinks that's chilly for the summer time. he's also asked me random questions and is just a joy to be around. you have to be careful what you say though, cuz he'll remember it - especially if it has anything to do with numbers! a kid after my own heart...haha!

oh, and i forgot to mention that i somehow managed to talk engineering to my counselors the other day! we were talking about how kids are SOOO quiet when they get up in front of people (like during worship, specifically praying) and we were brainstorming ways to get them to be louder. i told them that in the equation that describes the way sound drops off based on distace, the distance is actually squared, therefore if they decrease the distance just a little bit, it makes the sound much louder. they all kind of stared at me until someone kind of chuckled and then they quickly changed the subject. oh well, guess not everyone needs to know about engineering - but i'm finding ways to apply it to real life!

today i got a break from camp for a little bit - just enough time for yoga, then dinner with jen and naida, and then walmart (where i ran into camper parents - yikes this town is small!) and then to HEB where i couldn't find the pickles. and no, i don't eat pickles, i was getting them for a friend. but i found them, so don't worry. they were next to the pb and j....go figure.

today the high was 105. i can't wait to get out of here on FRIDAY!

ps

oh, and when i go to south dakota the HIGH is supposed to be 77. our LOWs here are somewhere around 79...HAHA! i'm brining sweatpants and sweatshirts to SD with me and i will love every minute of it!

time off

i just realized i haven't had an entire day off since may 23rd. that's a long time! sure, i've had a few hours off now and then, but not a whole day. i'm tired!

today when i was supposed to have the day off, i ended up having to work a wedding we had here at camp. then, once i finally make it home to take a nap, my lovely staff members kept knocking on my door for stupid things! one kid nearly pounded down my door because i didn't answer right away (if i don't answer the door after pounding, wouldn't you think, oh maybe she's sleeping or oh, maybe she's not here), woke me up, and then asked me for a car key, which was already checked out by one of his friends on staff. AH! not cool staff, not cool. so now i've closed every single blind possible in my house and i'm pretending i'm not here. not sure it will help, but maybe it will be a deterrent.

BUT i get to go to colorado and south dakota on friday! i cannot wait for some quality time with quality friends and some TIME OFF!

but really, i love my job.

this is it.

so this is it. staff training is officially over and hopefully my staff is prepared for the 130 people that will arrive at camp on sunday. i'm nervous...how can you teach people how to take care of children in just over a week? that's a big task.

the other day, evan, my boss, came up to me and said that he was going to go put a bed together. this may sound like a strange thing for an executive director to do, but he said it was because matt and i had everything else taken care of, that was the only thing left he could help with. guess that's a good sign! matt and i have both been running around like crazy - i can't imagine how matt did this without another person.

so our staff gets time off starting tonight and then they have to be back onsite by 8 am on Sunday. i'm not sure how i feel about that extended time off, but it's kind of tradition around here. don't mess with tradition! i'm learning that.

the news tonight said we're working on 20 days in a row with temperatures above 90. that's bad news since right now it's 88 (at 10 pm) and that's the average HIGH for this time of year. oh well!

ok, i'm done for tonight.