Virtually Paul

Weddings, Pirates, Koreans and self-analysis

January 13, 2007 on 11:43 pm | In Ministry, The Life of Paul |

I’m back from a challenging week as a co-director on the bi-annual Junior Camp. Last week was my 8th Junior Camp in a row. The theme being “The Quest for Treasure Island”. We had a bit of a pirate thing happening, as I’ve previously mentioned.

I missed the first day thanks to my groomsmanly responsibilities in Nathan and Liz’s wedding. It was a great day. The ceremony was completely them and the reception was a great night too. I loved all of it. I was given the honour of making a speech which I thoroughly enjoyed preparing and delivering. But the best part of it all was watching my good friend Nathan, who I’ve journeyed with as a friend in life and faith for 5 years, including 2 and a half as housemates, make a commitment to a girl he loves to bits. We also both had a chance to talk to each other the night before and bring our era as housemates to a close in a really positive way. It was a really edifying experience as well as an extremely happy occasion. I drove up to camp on the Sunday morning.

The camp was very different this time for a number of reasons. For a start, the director who has run them for twice as long as I have been involved, resigned from involvement with the campsite some months back. That forced a few role changes for some of us. We had to take more of a hands on approach to running the camp program and all of the administrative stuff that comes with that. Additionally, our study leader pulled out less than a month before camp, prompting me to step up and take on that role as well.

That would have been fine in and of itself. What made the camp really difficult, for someone like me who likes to feel like they’re in control, was the presence of a visiting school group from South Korea. The kids spoke basic conversational English. One-on-one you could generally communicate with them well enough without knowing any Korean. Addressing the whole group or playing crowd controller was a different story though. The language barrier, for me, was quite frustrating. Fortunately, before camp I managed to track down a married couple who both speak Korean. They generously volunteered their time to come along to the camp (with their young family) and were instrumental in helping us with translation stuff. The guy who booked the school group into the camp seriously under-prepared us for all of the language and cultural issues that we had to deal with. All in all, I’d have to say the frustration nearly got the best of me.

That said, I think the leadership team did a superb job. There wasn’t a single leader on this camp who was just there to make up the numbers. Everyone who participated brought along a unique blend of gifts, talents and strengths to add to the overall team. I was incredibly impressed with everyone’s contribution. It was great to see some good friends (and also some new ones) really flourishing, rising to the occasion and coming into their own.

We finished up the week with a leaders’ retreat at a friend’s place. This was a great way to end the week. It made the camp feel a little bit more relaxed because no one felt as though they were having to try and force some social time into the scarce periods where there wasn’t anything happening. We were all pretty emotionally tired from a week of pouring ourselves into the camp program, so it was pretty easy to just kick back and soak up a very easy community atmosphere amongst the group. I pulled out the guitar at one stage and we all sang along to different songs, which was good fun. We all did a personality typing quiz thanks to a certain Myers-Briggs enthusiast who shall remain nameless. And I got to lay on a trampoline for a few happy minutes of solitude and silence and look at the stars in the country night sky.

I’ve mentioned before that coming back from camp is a curious experience. I’ve described this already but I’ll say it again. The whole regimented camp schedule is extremely predictable. Expectations are clear, activities are constantly scheduled, meals are a routine that happen without any real effort. When you finally do get a bit of downtime, you generally use it to rest up rather than reflect and evaluate things, because you know the next day is going to require the same amount of energy from a lowering set of reserves.

The effect is a total life reset. You don’t really have a choice. You have to put yourself and your usual rhythms on hold. So I’ve come back to earth and piece by piece I’m starting to pick up my life, examining each fragment as I go. I don’t really have much to say about all of that yet. I don’t know if I’m really ready for any major practical life changes. I’m going back to work on Wednesday. I’m kind of looking forward to that, having had a good rest and some distance from it for a few weeks. I suspect there will be a few attitudinal changes to make… but I haven’t quite come to grips with everything just for the moment.

Stay tuned.