Special K & Kids' Camp

I'm known as some variation of Kelly, Kells, Kell-Bell most of the year round, but come the last week of July each year I take on a new identity...

I am...

SPECIAL K.
Camp Counselor extraordinaire!

The girls from my cabin this year.

 8 years ago I attended my first Kids' Camp from our church as a camp counselor and was nick-named Special K by the leaders there, and the name has stuck. Now Dave (AKA Brotha D) and I go each year, and have slowly taken over most of the responsibilities.  We lead worship, we teach, we plan activities, and make sure the kids have the time of their lives. It's three full days and nights of go-go-go and we bring a bus load of 5th & 6th graders home completely exhausted at the end, but it's wonderful.

The whole crew - 16 fifth graders, 6 sixth graders, 7 counselors

Showing off our silly sides

This year was an especially great year - everything from the theme, the teaching, the activities and the kids response to the Lord was easy.  Our children's pastors said that in the 17 years they'd been doing Kids' Camp that it was among the very best and I'm really glad we got to be a part.

It's not just fun for kids either - us counselors have the time of our lives too.  The beautiful thing about this age group is that they're old enough to be semi-responsible for themselves and yet young enough that they still listen to everything you say.  This is how we could send our kids to bed each night in their rooms and tell them to go to sleep... and they would.  This is also how us counselors would stay up for several hours longer playing card games, eating totally unhealthy snacks and laughing until the wee hours of the morning.

Serious frisbee golfing

 It's also how we were able to allow the kids to keep making runs on the Alpine Slide while we got in a game of frisbee golf down the hillside of Mt. Hood.

And it's where I got this nice sunburn after telling all my girls to wear sunscreen and then not applying any myself!

Sometimes not practicing what you preach is painful!!

However the view to get that sunburn was WELL WORTH IT!  We took the kids up to the Alpine Slides for the day and riding the ski lifts up the side of ski bowl gave us the most gorgeous view of not just Mt. Hood, but also Mt. St. Helens, Rainier and Adams all in Washington, and then also Mt. Jefferson and Sisters ridges on the Eastern side of Oregon. 

Riding the chair lift up

Part of the track of the Alpine Slide

View of Mt. Hood from the top!

The whole weekend was tremendous...and I'm so grateful to the Lord for the ministry He did not just in the kid's lives, but in mine too.  It's a beautiful thing how you spend all this time preparing to teach the kids and the Lord turns around and teaches you too.  Kids' Camp is a great platform for me to be stretched and move out of my natural comfort zones... while I've been leading worship for years now, doing more of the teaching/preaching side, prophetic ministry and leading pre-prayer still gets me a bit nervous, but the kids were responsive and the Lord was gracious and I'm already pumped up and excited for next year!

Leading pre-prayer before our first general session.

Having an awesome worship time with the kids

Teaching Saturday morning on "knowing who we are in Christ."

I was also so very proud of my dear husband, who has NO problem whatsoever in teaching/preaching/prophesying/ministering because he's AWESOME and was in rare form this past weekend!  Oh what an amazing man I married.  Watching him in action makes me fall in love with him all over again!

My cutie-patootie preaching machine of a sexy husband!

Who need s'mores when you've got something as sweet as him???!!!

Yep, I think Special K & Brotha D will be returning to Kids Camp for many years to come!