It was bound to happen; I’m getting all out of order with my blog posts. This blog is not about this week, but the week before the amazing weekend last weekend…I hope that makes sense! I have just a couple of stories from the week that I’d like to share. And thanks to spell check I’m finally spelling “disguise” right; there are some things modern technology is good for, I suppose. :)
First disguise: asthma. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you heard about Bryce’s asthma attack. Bryce is the soundman for the summer at Lake Ann, and because he’s still in high school part of his contract gives him a free week as a senior high camper. His counselor was Zach (from Yellow Team) and his sister counselor was Becca, and I know both of them pretty well, so I was spending the afternoon on Thursday with their group watching them conquer the Goliath, a giant climbing ladder (see pics on Twitter). While he was on the top rung, Bryce started hyperventilating and had to come down right away. After he took a puff of his inhaler, he passed out, and we couldn’t get him to wake up. Becca gathered the entire group in another area while Zach and the nurses tried to revive him. One of the climbing specialists called 9-1-1, and I just kept asking, “What can I do?” Eventually my job was to go the camp entrance and wave down the ambulance and tell them where to go. Easy job, but at least I was doing something! After the ambulance was there, the camp director Ken came and “took over” so Zach could be with his cabin.
Blessing: music. I stood with the group as the girls were crying and the guys were praying and comforting them. They were singing worship songs, and Becca looked over at me and named a couple of hymns really quick; in that stressful moment she couldn’t remember the words. So I stood with them hugging them and leading them in worship. Who would have thought that an asthma attack would spark a random worship session in the middle of the woods? I guess it makes sense if you think about it. But I had been praying for something to do to help, and God allowed me to go back to my roots and remember all those hymns and 90’s worship songs that these kids grew up with so I could provide some comfort and peace. Soon after we found out from Zach that Bryce was awake in the ambulance and that he would be okay, and by that evening he was back and smiling bigger than ever when I ran to give him a hug.
Second disguise: working in the snack shack. Well, I guess it’s not so much a disguise; being able to work in the snack shack once a week is a fun blessing for me. But for Anjela, the high school girl who works there every day, it can get pretty boring. By Friday she was totally bored and had pages full of song lyrics she was copying down, just so she had something to do. For this week I had traded days with Dane so he could be with the junior high on Friday afternoon; he worked Tuesday for me and I had just arrived to work Friday for him.
Blessing: more music. Anjela and I started having a conversation about marching band. Although my marching days are long over, I still remembered a lot of the marches that we played, either in concert band or while we were actually marching. She started singing one of the classics (for the life of me I couldn’t remember the composer), but I knew it and remembered the tune very well. It wasn’t long before we were dancing/marching around the inside of the snack shack and singing the march as we went. We got smiles from the workers in the Red Canoe and rolled-eyes from Elisha, the other snack shack worker who still isn’t sure if marching band is a real sport (which it IS, by the way). About a half-hour later when we started getting a lot more orders coming in, one of the counselors came to order a slushie and asked Anjela how her day was going. I was scooping ice cream or something when I heard her say, “Oh, it’s been the best day ever! Deanna and I were dancing around the snack shack singing marching band songs! I always have so much fun when Deanna’s here.” I could not believe that dancing around the snack shack would make Anjela’s day so much better; I’ll have to make sure I do that more often!
This week that I’ve been writing about was a great reminder to me about how simple ministry can be. Obviously our main output of ministry on HeartSong is music. For these two days I was able to use music to minister to a bunch of different high schoolers; music brought peace to the cabin mates who were scared and it brought joy to the bored snack shack worker. And most of those weren’t even HeartSong songs; it was just God giving me a memory to retain music easily so I could bring it back when I needed to. I am so blessed, and so humbled, and so thankful, that God would use my memory of so-called trivial songs to be a blessing to other people. SOLI DEO GLORIA!!!
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