I’m left with more questions than answers, a familiar place for me for certain. Why was I born in America to a loving family with enough money for more than we need? How can I summon the audacity to cry over the trifles the I call my problems when those children held joy in their hearts with next to nothing to their name? How many of the children that I looked in the eye have been beaten, starved, and sexually exploited?

But more than anything, how do I sleep peacefully every night in my warm bed while these I have seen and countless others are hurting? How is it that I call my life Christian when I take the time to pray for my personal wish list, yet consistently fail to bring their case to the Father? What good is my faith if I look only for the rewards, never the obligations?

But as of today (Wednesday at 4:45 PM), I know of one thing I hope to take with me from this trip. Today I was broken. I melted down.

It was two hours into our final party day with the kids. It was my chance to give the kids haircuts, which I thought would be really fun and cool. Kaz and I had given each other mohawk hairstyles, and the kids thought they were really cool. Many had come and told us they wanted the same haircut. But things did not shake out the way I expected.

First of all, I was very stressed when it was about time to start, because I was getting conflicting orders about when to start. The previous year they had been cutting hair all week off to the side, but this time we were cramming it into one afternoon. I was worried that we would not have time for everyone who was already crowding around the haircut station, but I was told not to cut hair yet. Kids were jockeying for position and trying to tell me what they wanted in broken English.

Eventually, I got the all clear to start cutting hair, but before I was halfway finished with the first kid, I was told I had to stop by someone else. To make matters worse, I had forgotten the electric shaver I bought with my mom in my car in Austin, so we were using a different one with no guards. I had one length available, and it was really short. The kids said that the kid in my seat wanted it all even and short. But when I cut it, they started laughing, and the kid felt bad. I don’t have much experience cutting hair, much less in high stress situations, and thus his hair wasn’t exactly even. In fact, it was far from even, a lot closer to hideous.

The heat added to my misery. I have no idea what the temperature was that afternoon, but I know it was scorching. Even in the shade, I had sweating drenching my back and chest and dripping down my face. Sweat in the eyes does not help a new barber. It poured off me, many times forming huge drops that would fall from my nose onto the kids I was working with.

In addition to all that, I’m really hungry again. You see, every day for lunch a different nation cooks for all the kids and staff. But without fail, every day they cooked something I was allergic to. That means I’m trying to run on my highest energy output setting to make it fun for the kids and spur on the staff, but I’m running on empty.

The second kids wanted a mohawk, and I was able to do it pretty well, and then I handed off to Kaz for the next few kids. While I was waiting for my turn to cut, my first kid came back to see me. I tried to be positive about it, but he was not having it. He was mad, and demanded my hat to help him hide the mess I had made of his head. Bear in mind this is my new CotH hat, so it was not my dearly beloved beaten up hat, but my number two. I unwillingly parted with it.

I tried to put some music on, which had been lacking the last two days. I’ll explain…

Day 1 we had no music, because nobody was in charge of it. I asked P’Robert about it near the end of the day, and he told me that if I could make it happen to do it. I had brought blank CDs and my laptop for just that purpose. Day 2 comes, and we pop in my freshly burned CD of great dance music. Things are great for a few minutes. Ben and I dance poorly and crazily for about five straight minutes, then are replaced by the twins, Keith and Kenneth, who do actual dancing. But then the CD starts to skip, and we have to turn it off.

Turns out that on the long flight, my CDs had all been jostled and scratched. I tried to burn new ones that night, but of who knows how many attempts, only three CDs got written. Of those, only one would play in the stereo we had. So back to Day 3, I tried to play the one working CD. Almost immediately, it begins skipping.

At this point, it feels an awful like everything I do is crashing and burning. It’s hard for me to convey looking back just how frustrated, upset, and angry I was. I think at this point I looked over and saw three other guys all doing a much better of cutting hair than me. Then the little kids with my hat runs up and says, “I keep,” which I take to mean he’s going to keep my hat.

In an act of selfishness that borders on astounding, I decided that I would go buy a hat for the kid so I could get my hat back. As I walked the block or so to the hotel, I was furious, not at the kid, but at the situation and at myself for everything that had happened and was happening. Why didn’t I double-check to make sure I had the clippers? Why didn’t I make sure the CDs were safe? Why didn’t I think to get food beforehand? I was completely overwhelmed by everything, but mostly my own weakness and inability to do things right. My positivity was just about at zero.

And somehow, as I resolutely walked to serve myself first by buying a hat for the kid, I was struck by a Bible verse. My power is made perfect in your weakness. God’s power is made perfect when I can’t do it. When I fail. When I am not enough. When everything I do goes down in flames and good still comes of it, the good is all from God, and it is evident that it is all Him. I turned around and said to myself, “Go back and be weak,” then jogged back to the kids.

Did everything go well for me after that? Not really. It wasn’t quite as bad as the first two hours, but that last hour wasn’t great for me by any means. I got to brush some girls’ hair for lice and got to see the first kid get his hair cleaned up so it looked okay. He even smiled and gave me a hug. But at the end of the day, I knew that I has failed, miserably. Yet God had made good things out of my pathetic attempts to love like His Son. I want to remember that, because surely this is not the last epic failure I will live through. Especially with my first summer as Camp Director coming up, I will likely be failing at being Jesus much more often. But I want to remember that even when my best effort falls far short, God is good enough anyway.

My day started at 9:00 A.M. by meeting with the volunteer trainer and the rest of the trainees. We sat around and chatted while waiting for the rest of the people to get there. I was shocked to see about a dozen college-aged kids had shown up to work there during their Christmas break. But soon I realized that this was not of their own volition. Every other person was there to do court-mandated community service. Most of them had alcohol related charges brought against them, from driving under the influence to minor in possession.

Since I was the only guy there out of free will, I was given extra responsibilities. I was charged with accompanying another guy to H.E.B. to pick up day old bread to be brought back to the food bank. After completing this task, I sought out the work manager and told him about the situation. I figured that since I was only there for one day, it made sense for me to get the worst jobs, so the other people didn’t get discouraged. The worst case scenario was that I’d be worn out and a little unhappy at the end of the day, but had completed some important and undesirable tasks.

Turns out, though, that the jobs I was assigned weren’t all that bad. Most of them corresponded to what I used to do when I was a grunt worker at Camp of the Hills. I swept and mopped out walk-in refrigerators, hallways, and bathrooms. I beat the dust of years out of some rugs. I even helped pack food into boxes and onto pallets to be shipped off to those who needed it.

I feel like the most important thing I did that day was through my attitude. I was positive and friendly to everyone there, from the staff I was working for to the convicts working for the community while waiting for parole, to the “volunteers” the court had sent. I looked for ways to help those around me and took initiative when I could. When I ran out of stuff to do, I found my supervisor and asked what else he needed.

I didn’t just wake up one day and think, “I should go volunteer at the food bank today…” A close family friend ours had a brother named Jack Borden who loved the work that was done there and believed in it very strongly. He passed away a little more than a year ago. Their whole family has meant so much to our family over the years. Jack’s brother Robert has always been especially supportive of me and my ministry, from Camp of the Hills to Thailand. Our family was reminded about how special they have been to us, and we decided that it would be a cool thing to spend some time volunteering at a place Jack held dear as a tribute to him and his family.

I felt great as I left that day, not only because I like the feeling of tired muscles after a hard day’s work, but because I felt like I had given a little back to a family who had given us so much.

I’ve gotten my schedule for the Spring semester, and it looks great. Not only are the times just about perfect, but the classes seem to be what I need. I have what I think are my last English and Math courses ever this semester. I’m excited about English because I like to write, as you may have noticed. I’m stoked about Math because after this semester, I may never be in a Math class again, which will be a relief for someone who has struggled in mathematics since the eighth grade.

My two other courses are far more interesting though. I’ll be taking my first courses about the Bible, The Life and Teachings of Jesus and Acts-Revelation. The latter is taught by Randy Harris, who I’ve heard rave reviews about from just about everyone. To top it off, these aren’t the required classes for every ACU student, these are tailor made for Bible Majors, which means more in depth study and smaller class size. I am all kinds of excited.

For now, it’s not much more than an introduction and a few stories I copied over from this blog. I plan to update it with new stories that y’all haven’t read yet soon, though. I’ll put a link to it on the side of this blog as well as in this post. Hope you’ll enjoy once it gets up and running in earnest!

Camp Director Blog!

Last March, I went to Cambodia with many of the Thai Christians, along with churches from Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan. It was easily one of the most amazing experiences I had there. This year the churches plan to go minister to the kids again, and Kaz and I are looking at the possibility of going back for it.

It’d be pretty expensive, but it just so happens to land right in the middle of our Spring Break. Right now we’re looking at the logistics of a trip to Cambodia, and whether or not we can find a way to get there. I know that I felt really used by God there. My energy, positivity, and flexibility really fit in well. I hope that I’ll be able to go back and see the kids I met, reconnect with old friends, and encourage everyone.

Please be praying that if God wants me there, that the money and logistics will come together.

*While I was typing this post, I received an email from ACU, congratulating me on my acceptance! Whoop!

For instance, I’m planning a prospective counselor retreat in January. If I Twitter the weekend, every couple of hours I could send in what’s going on, quick stories, and remind myself of moments I want to expound on later.

After tinkering with it for a while, I got it working. If you click the link below, it’ll send you to my Twitter site. If you’d rather just keep reading this blog, don’t worry. All the major stuff will still be written here. With a character count limit of 140 per Tweet and my penchant for going into detail, it wouldn’t work out too well. But if you read a Tweet and want me to go into further detail, feel free to leave a comment here asking about it.

I came back into the B/CS last Sunday night for the Thanksgiving holiday. I woke up Monday morning with an important task ahead of me. I received the photos and video clips for the HYPE Thanksgiving Banquet slide show the night before around midnight. My assignment was to put together one of my videos for them to show at the Banquet.

Last year, the video took close to twenty hours of work, due to the length of the video and my relative inexperience creating slide shows. This year I knocked it out in less than five hours. All the ours perfecting videos for the blog came in handy. I was able to integrate video clips and pictures, along with background sound and music. I think it turned out pretty well.

It was nice to not be in charge during the Banquet. Last year, Kaz, Kendra and I were constantly scrambling and worried out of our minds. This year Kaz and I just showed up and did the little things that needed to be done. We corraled kids, boxed up extra food, and took out the trash. It was much more enjoyable to watch from the sidelines.

Kaz and I hit up Wings N More for a post-Banquet wingfest, and we shot the breeze about life, Camp and other matters of importance. I finally got home around 11:30.

Soon after reaching home, Dad came home. He checked on Mom and Grams (Mom’s mom who has been staying with us), who were in their bedroom tring to get to sleep. He came back into the kitchen with a worried look. Grams just had a seizure. We stayed with her and called 911, and firemen and EMTs reached the house in a matter of minutes. By this time, Grams had gotten a little better but was still disoriented. Soon she was surrounded by seven guys in their late 20s to early 30s.

I was hanging out in the room with them while they were taking blood pressure and such, when a thought occured to me. Dad and I always kid Grams about inviting college-aged guys over for parties when we’re not around. I told her that we’d finally caught her with all her boyfriends over, and she was tickled. Less than two minutes later, Dad popped in and said the same thing, and an EMT or two started chuckling.

She headed with them to the E.R., and we followed in the Blazer. Mom went in with her to the room, and Dad and I chilled in the Waiting Room. I had grabbed my laptop, and the E.R. had free wireless internet, so I updated my facebook profile to ask for prayers. I got a few comments on it, and my friend Matt even called to make sure we were okay. I told him we were doing alright, but we’d probably be there a few hours. Sure enough, Matt walks through the doors fifteen minutes later, and waits with us.

Around 3:30 A.M., Grams gets released. The nurse who brought her out happened to be a friend of mine from the Aggies For Christ who I hadn’t seen in a long time, so we chatted for a while then headed home. Turns out Grams’ doctor was trying to wean her off seizure medicine, and this was her first week completely off it. She doing just fine now, but it was a bit scary for a while.

So, my week has been pretty eventful. I head back to Abilene for a few more days tomorrow, then it’s Christmas Break!

This is especially good news because the doctors told us that if it stayed gone for two years, she has a 99.99% chance of it staying gone for good. Many thanks for those who prayed for her and our family over the course of the last two and a half years, the people who helped us out by bringing food and visits, and the people who helped me get through that summer at Camp while Mom was so sick.

I’ve got news frm the recruiting front, but it just doesn’t seem important when compared to this. I’ll update on Camp of the hills some other time. For now, Mom’s news is what’s important.