Here I Go Again

Well, I just finished a week with 230 hormone filled high school schools students. We were hot, wet, tired, sweaty, and frustrated together. However, we also made some great music, had a lot of laughs and were able to produce something almost respectable by Friday night. That's right, you guessed it. It was band camp. A week of working from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon to get a head start on our marching band season. This years band camp had a special significance for anyone connected to the band at the end of last years season. You see, at our state marching contest, affectionately termed NSBA, we came away with and excellent rating. This, at first blush, may not seem like a big deal but it was the first time in 13 years that the Kearney High Marching Band had gotten anything less than a superior rating at any contest. I hit us all like a mule kicking you right on the sternum (or so I would suppose. I have never actually been kicked by a mule in the sternum). It caused me and the other director I work with to evaluate everything we do and make the changes that needed to be made. This years camp started out with a determination to never let that kind of thing happen again. I think it's going to be a good year for the Kearney High Marching Band.

The arrival of band camp always indicates the nearness of the end of summer. However, I still have one more adventure left to go. Tomorrow I leave for a week at camp. This is exciting news except for the fact that, once again, I am leaving and my family is staying. You see, I am a counselor at a camp for abused and neglected kids called "Royal Family Kids Camp". The camp is run out of our church and has decidedly Christian overtones, but the main premise of the camp is not to evangelize these children but rather to treat them like royalty for a week. To leave them with the knowledge that someone loves them not because they are getting a check from the state or because it is their job, but just because. It is an amazing opportunity to have a major effect on someone's life. I was a counselor (or big camper as we call them, "counselor" has certain connotations to some of these kids) last year and have had the opportunity to see one of the children I worked with last year start coming to our church. Like I said before, this is not the goal of the camp and formal contact with these kids after camp is strictly forbidden, but to see a little life that has been so wounded start to take on some kind of meaning was very powerful.

That said, I am looking forward to this camp. I know that God has blessed me with wonderful many wonderful relationships throughout my life and this is a chance to bless others with what I have been given. But it does mean another week away from home and my wife and children in a summer that seen much of that already. I am comforted with the knowledge that my wife and my children fully support what I am doing and will be praying for me at home. I am sure this week will be quite an adventure and a fitting way to usher in the beginning of the school year.