Kate's Blog

So now that I’ve has some time to regroup and recuperate from camp I thought I’d share some of what I learned and witnessed at camp…


The first day of camp is a “set-up” day for the staff and counselors. We spend our time getting all of the activity stations together, decorating the bunk rooms, and getting reacquainted with each other. The next day the kids arrive at noon, but before that we always have a meeting that includes a teaching from one of the pastors that works at camp. (I must confess that previous years the preaching from the pastor who does this service has never seemed at all applicable or even understandable, however this year he did a great job.)

I think you already know that RFKC (Royal Family Kids Camp) is a Christian based camp, but we really don’t preach to the kids. It is, and has always been, a week of simply loving on children who are desperate for love and praying that they can see a glimpse of who Christ is through us and his love for them through us. The message the morning before the kids showed up was on 1 Corinthians 13. At the beginning of the message I thought “Ok, I know this verse I can check out for a while now,” but the pastor had us do something interesting. He reminded us that Jesus (or the Holy Spirit) is the love within each one of us and he read the verse this way:

Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. Jesus is not rude, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered, he keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Jesus never fails.

Then he again reminded us that because Jesus is in each of us and we are reflections of Jesus we could also recite the verse inserting our name (he used the Message version for this). He had us all insert our name in the blanks and we recited each line out loud...

___________ never gives up.
___________ cares more for others than for self.
___________ doesn't want what he/she doesn't have.
___________ doesn't strut,
___________ doesn't have a swelled head,
___________ doesn't force himself/herself on others,
___________ isn't always 'me first,'
___________ doesn't fly off the handle,
___________ doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
___________ doesn't revel when others grovel,
___________ takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
___________ puts up with anything,
___________ trusts God always,
___________ always looks for the best,
___________ never looks back, but keeps going to the end

___________ never dies (note: because we have eternal life in Christ)

I realized that alone none of the above statements could be true of any human, but with the strength, patience, love, etc. that Christ provides for us they could all be true.

The goal of the message was to remind us what we should “look” like or “act” like around these children to communicate God’s perfect love, but I think it could be applied to everyday life as well. I can honesty say no one at camp would be able to check off all of the statements as true statements of themselves for the week we were ministering, but I trust that God’s grace and our humility blinded the children to our human downfalls and that God’s love was clearly communicated. I think the same is true in life… that if we can truly humble ourselves God’s grace is able to make his love even more visible and apparent in our lives. (Proverbs 3:34, Luke 14:11, Ephesians 4:1-3, James 4:5-6) Likewise if we try to make and will ourselves to be like the “love” in 1 Corinthians13, we are acting out of God’s grace and we will fail at communicating the purity of God’s love.

An intense week with troubled, neglected, and abused children will bring out the worst in anyone and it was amazing this week how God’s love was able to cover and calm our fears, angers, and frustrations. Imagine a room full of 34 children and 50 adult… there is VERY loud music playing… 3 kids are on the music stage playing with the expensive wireless microphones and tipping music stands over (2 adults approach them and give them “fake” plastic microphones and direct them to stand so everyone can see them sing into them)… 4 kids are break dancing, kicking others as they go (1 child is called by his counselor to sit in his seat so they can sing together, another two are quickly distracted by the motions to the song and cease their spastic dancing, and the other is moved by an adult to a larger area of the room where he can break dance without hurting anyone)… 8 seven year old girls cling to their adult female counselors clapping hands and doing motions to the songs smiling amazingly bright smiles… an eleven year old and 9 year old boy are on stage playing air guitar and reveling in the audiences applause and the attention they desperately needed… there are also kids leaning on their singing counselors feigning sleep, girls in dress-up clothe twirling in the aisles, boys throwing their stuffed animals up in the air, and kids doing a number of things that would initiate the wagging finger and nagging voice of any seasoned parent… however, no one in the room is nagging and as soon as the song stops it takes but a few seconds for all the kids to intently begin listening to the story of Moses. They know by now if they sit quietly they may be chosen to act in the cast of characters in the story and the could be dressed up as Moses mother who sends him in the basket down the stream, Merriam who watches the basket, the princess who adopts Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, or any number of characters in today’s story. The only noise during the story is that of a ten year old boy who professes he gets angry sometimes too like Moses (when he killed the Egyptian) and an eight year old girl who reminds Pastor Sue that she said the story wrong because it was only the boy children who Pharaoh ordered be killed and she only said “children” today when she was reviewing the beginning of the story.

It is amazing to me what God can do in one week of a person’s life. We had fearful and closed children step off the bus on Monday morning and by Friday they were singing, laughing, and enjoying the people, activities, and surroundings they were in. This camp was my fifth and I finally realized the children coming off the bus have the hearts of adults, they have lost their carefree childhood along the way somewhere and they gain in back at camp, even if it is only for a short time. It brings new meaning to Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3-5.

It is truly hard to communicate how blessed I am each year by working with the staff and kids at RFKC, but I hope this gave you some glimpse into what it is all about.

If you interested check out www.rfkcboise.org or www.rfkcboise.blogspot.com for more information and pictures of what we did at camp this week.