My Week in Pictures (minus lectures)

 Day 1. Alica, her sister Jessica, me, and some of Jessica's friends. Alicia and I were talking and Jessica was talking with her friends. Someone asked us to take a picture, so we did. I honestly have no idea who the other two girls are. Alica is right beside me (second to left) and Jessica is in the middle.

 My evangelizing group (to the right). We were talking to a boy that we stopped on his skateboard just about to put his headphones on.

 My small group playing mafia. From left to right it is me, Alicia, Sarah, Kathryn, and the person kind of hidden is Jennifer.

 The bean bag toss at our relay. All the girls were lined up on one side and the guys are on the other. We were tossing a bean bag back and forth and if we dropped it we had to start back at the beginning of the line.

 Ultimate Frisbee practice on Tuesday afternoon. We were playing sleeves and sleeveless. I was on sleeves.

 The blue team's cheer included all of us doing the can-can. This is just four of our very uncoordinated group. Thankfully, we are actually all doing the same thing. :)

 Alicia playing Phase 10. She was posing for the camera. This was during our break before dinner and we were all incredibly bored waiting for Jennifer to come, so we got out our Phase 10 cards.

 My small group and the small group that gave us the tea party. I wish I remembered everyone's names, but I don't.

 Kathryn and I at breakfast Friday morning. (left)







(bottom) Jennifer and I after our last small group meeting.

My amazing small group on Friday. From left to right: Kathryn, Joelle, Anna, me, Alicia, Margaret, Sarah, and Summer. Jennifer is taking the picture. :)

Wisdom

At Worldview, there was a running gag. In one lecture, they asked "Why should you pursue wisdom?" Then they told us a quick story about one persons response to this answer. He replied, "Because she's hot!"

Background information: We were just mentioning that wisdom is a woman, because Proverbs is written as a letter from a father to his son. Wisdom is something that is to be pursued, like love. So now you see where this is coming from.

One of the boys in our group raised his hand and was called on, "Can I have a shirt that says, 'Why should you pursue wisdom? Because she's hot!'?" The rest of the week, people would ask why we should pursue wisdom and we all answered "SHE'S HOT!!!"

Friday

Last day of camp. So sad. Before I go into that, I forgot to mention something Thursday. Our last lecture of the night was the best lecture in the world! Mr. Brandon Booth taught on Seven Lies You Already Believe. He taught this through popular music. It was epic!! It also made a lot of sense and he has very valid points. Now to Friday. We got up, as usual, but then we had to throw the rest of our stuff into our bags and take them down to the lobby. Then we had our last devotions. Breakfast was very slow and sad. We played another game of spoons, which always cheers us up. Then we had mass exodus from the cafeteria down to the chapel, where we would be having our final lecture with our parents. Mom and Dad were already there when we all walked in. I said hi, but then had to get to my seat in time for the lecture. Brandon talked about Real life Top 10 List, which was the ten most important decisions you have to make and how to do so according to the Bible. When that was over, we all found our small groups for our last meeting. Jennifer presented us with our certificates, test scores from the night before, and our small group pictures. We got one more picture as a group and then "Tally" was called. We all responded in our usual "Ho!" fashion and gathered as a group. Then we all slowly and quietly gathered into the room behind the sanctuary. Kaity yelled "TALLY!" and we responded with "HO!" and ran in cheering as a thanks to our parents for giving us up for a week to let us go to camp. It was quite fun..and loud. After that, we were shown a video from the week. http://worldview.org/index.php/camp-videos The Illinois video is the one from my week. We said good-bye to our counselors and camp was officially over.

Happy Birthday Rebekah!!

So, for once, I have actually said happy birthday on someones birthday! This person is very special to me and I hope her day is brilliant!!

Thursday

Today everyone woke up with a different attitude than most days. It was color team challenge day. We all excitedly got up and went to our devotions, quiet times, breakfast, and our first two lectures. Lunch seemed to creep by as we waited to go get ready for the challenges they had planned for us. Finally, Jennifer took us all back to the dorms to get ready. Alicia and I decked out in all the blue we could find. Then was the most important part of the day. During our normal small group time, Jennifer started walking us all over campus. We ended up in the dorm lobby. Then Jennifer took us towards the first floor lobby, which is usually where we had t-time. Before we got to the door, there was a piece of paper with an invitation to a tea party hosted by another small group. When we walked in, they all started cheering and welcoming us. All our group could thing was that we were way too spoiled. The only reason the other small group did this was to get to know our group a little better. All of us had cups with our names and some pictures on them. Unfortunately that ended way too soon. Then we all met outside the lecture hall/cafeteria. Our color teams all got together and started working on our cheers, which were part of the competition. Then they made everyone go find their small groups so they could know everyone was there. We all then ran back into our color teams and marched over to the football field. Then we had about 15 minutes to work on our cheers. Ours was going to be really cool, but we had two guys leading it and we never ended up practicing. We went first and failed, but all the other teams did really well. Then we had our relay. There were several physical and mental challenges we had to accomplish to win. Blue team did win that. We were all very excited!!! Unfortunately  we did not know until Friday morning that we had won because it was really close with the yellow team. Next was the renowned leaders vs. students Ultimate Frisbee game. We got the closest score in seven years. The students were only one point behind the leaders when the leaders called time. This was on purpose so that they won. :) Then we had a little bit of time before dinner so we could all shower. Dinner went fast, then we played a game of spoons. We had our next lecture then the award of the Spamley Cup. In other words, the people who overall won the competition today. It ended up being the green team. Then we had worship and another lecture. Next was campfire. There was no fire though. It was just for us to all talk about our favorite parts of the week and share what we learned. We also sang some songs. After campfire, we had our last t-time. We just evaluated our day, then Jennifer sent us all to go pack up as much as we could that night. Lights out was at 12:15 because of this. We all quickly fell asleep that night. This was the end of our last night at camp. :'(

Wednesday

I woke up a little late, which was unfortunate for everyone. We had our usual devotions, quiet times, breakfast, and the continuation of Phase 10. Then we had our first two lectures. After the second lecture, we usually go to lunch, but today was special. We were given a short explanation of what we were going to be doing that afternoon. We were also split up into two waves. I was in wave one, which meant I got lunch first. After lunch, wave one all went out to the parking lot. Then we were split up into groups of three or four with at least one boy and one girl. My group had three girls and a boy. Anna, Alicia, me, and Austin. We found out our buses were waiting for us at the other end of campus, so wave one went in mass across campus. Brandon yelled out names of small groups to jump on either bus 1 or bus 2. We were told to sit in our groups of 3 or 4 on the bus ride. Wave 1 was on their way to evangelizing. Don't worry, we had a lot more briefing than the little talk before lunch. Once we got to the small town we were going to be evangelizing, they briefed us one more time and told us our boundaries. We had 45 minutes to talk to anyone on the street. My group had quite a bit of problems finding people to talk to, but then we found a Starbucks and just caught people on their way out. We were using a tract called 'The Ten Commandment Survey'. After our 45 minutes were up, we got back on the buses and went back to campus to watch a video of Bill Jack doing what we just did. This was extremely intriguing. When the other group got back, we had a debriefing where we got to tell stories of our time evangelizing. Then we got dinner and our usual night continued. A lecture, worship, the next lecture, the t-time. Jennifer told us all to go get ready for bed then meet her in her room in 40 minutes. All of us did what she said and we were glad we did! When we walked into her room, she had nail polish and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies waiting for us. They were some of the best cookies I have ever eaten! Warm and gooey straight out of the oven. All of us thanked her over and over that night. After we all painted our nails in our team colors, ate our cookies, and then went to bed. The end of the first day that everyone evaluated with a 5, the highest number, which means we LOVED the day.

Tuesday

We got up in the morning and quickly took our showers. Then rushed to devotions and quiet times, which were on integrity. We ate breakfast and started a game of Phase 10. We pretty much just did one round and all but one person was still on phase 1. Then we went to our first lecture of the day, got a ten minute break, in which we played the foot game/ninja. Next we had another lecture and then our transition into lunch. Transitions are basically just crowd control down the hall into the cafeteria. Girls always go first, no matter what. For some reason, my small group was almost always one of the first groups through. After lunch, we had small group time. We talked about the five pillars of servant leadership. Next was free time. Alicia, Anna, and I all went with several other kids to play basketball, but all the other kids wanted to play on the indoor court, which we were told several times not to play on. Alicia and I did not like this idea, so we went and played ultimate frisbee. After a while, I started to get over heated, so I went and got a cold shower and a cold drink. Then I watched the end of a game of mafia. Then our small group met up and we ate dinner. After dinner, we continued our game of Phase 10. We had our next lecture, worship, our last lecture, then my favorite part of the day. T-time. After the group evaluated the day, we played a game where Jennifer put oreos on our foreheads and we had to get them to our mouths without using our hands. She turned music on and we started the race. Anna won, then Sarah and I tied. After that, the three of us were laughing so hard we could not keep track of who finished next. Joelle unfortunately never was able to accomplish this task. She took an oreo to her room and tried for the next 15 minutes to get the cookie into her mouth. She never did. After lights out, Alicia and I looked out our window because we glanced and saw one of the boys rooms still had the light on. We saw two boys waving and dancing in the window. This, of course, made us start laughing hysterically and we kept watching. We know they could not see us because we were staying under the bushes in front of our window. They started doing 'morse code' with a flashlight after they turned their main lights off. We got our flashlight and started doing the same. We know that they were not talking to us, but it was still amusing to watch. Unfortunately, some staff members were walking by on the path right outside our window, so we had to stop. By the way, for those who are wondering, we never did find out which of the boys were doing this or who they were really talking to. We think it was some of the staff, because they had a HUGE room. The mystery will just have to remain. :)

Monday

After our hectic day Sunday, we thought we were ready for what was to come. We were wrong. We got up and Joelle and I took our showers, then we went to meet the rest of our small group. Unfortunately we met at the wrong end of the hall, so we were all waiting on each other. We ran outside so we could talk about what quiet times are. Then we did our quiet times and ran to breakfast. After breakfast, we had camp pictures. Those went really well. We also did a video of the whole camp, in formation, doing the wave. Thankfully, it only took one time and we did not have to shoot it again. Then we had two lectures that lasted until lunch. They were quite fun and insightful. In our break time between lectures, which were usually about 5-10 minutes long, we learned a game from Alicia called 'the foot game'. This game is extremely fun and also impossible to explain. If you really want to know how to play, you will have to meet me in person with a couple more people. Then was free time. I played maffia with the majority of our small group, while anyone else in our group played frisbee or basketball. After dinner, we had some more lectures. In the break between our last two lectures, many of my small group were walking around trying to convince ourselves we would live through one more lecture. Just to let you know, this was at 9:30 at night, so we were not bored of lectures, we were just tired. Jennifer, our small group leader, came up to us and made us start doing a really strange dance and made us repeat after her that lectures were fun and we were excited to get going. This made all of us start laughing and we contently went back for the next lecture. We found out that we actually had worship and then one more lecture, so we had a small break before sitting for another hour. After that we got small group time!!! We did something called Star Tipping. Then we evaluated our day and went to bed. Another great day had ended.

Sunday

After Church, we came home for lunch and then ran out the door to go to camp. When we arrived, staff were jumping up and down telling us where to go, all the way to which parking spot to park in. Immediately my door opened and one of the staff boys took my stuff up to my dorm room. We checked in and got our team color bands. I was blue and Caleb was red. The four colors are blue, green, red, and yellow. I got my key and then set my dorm up. While I was getting my room ready, my room mate came in and we started getting to know each other. Her name is Alicia (uh-lee-cee-uh). Margaret was also up there. She was my suit mate. After my room was set up, I went back down to say good-bye to my parents. I ran into one of my friends from church, which was really nice. It gave me a kind of peace knowing there was a girl that I already knew. After that all the campers were pulled into a gargantuan circle (130+ kids and staff). We learned the official WVA (Worldview Academy) call. Leader: "Tally!" Students: "HO!" Then we split up, girls and guys, to learn out small groups and leaders. I was in Jennifer's small group. There were eight girls and our leader. Sarah, Alicia, Anna, Summer, Margaret, Joelle, Kathryn, and me. We talked for a while, then went to dinner. The cafeteria has the best food! Then we had orientation. Basically, just laying down all the rules. Our first lecture came swiftly after that. The title of the lecture was "What Kind of Monster Are You?" We were talking about whether Christians are more like Jekyll and Hyde or Frankenstein. Just for those who are wondering, we are like Jekyll and Hyde because we are the only religion that believes man is inherently sinful.  Then we had worship time and our next lecture. The next lecture was an introductory to worldviews. We talked about several different religions and their worldviews. We talked about 9 different points about worldviews. After that we had a short little girl time where they talked to the girls and guys separately reiterating the rules. Then it was small group time, which they call t-time. We had a short talk about the day and cleared up anything that needed to be about the rules. All of us then went up to our rooms to get ready for bed. Alicia and I could NOT fall asleep. At this point, I must describe our room. There were two beds about 4 feet off the ground with a small dresser underneath. Right above our small closets was a smoke alarm that had two green flashing lights. Right outside our giant window was a lamp post that stays on ALL NIGHT. The walls were pure white and the carpet was gray. Now I can continue with the day. Alicia and I started comparing our room to a jail cell. There were blank walls, a search light shining into the room, and a security camera. Now you try sleeping! Alicia and I then opened our blinds and used the spotlight to see as we drew pictures and then used sticky foam to stick up our lovely drawings on the walls. This concludes the end of day 1.

The Whirlwind of Worldview Academy

So I have decide this is going to be several different posts, because one post would just be WAY too long. For those of you who do not know what Worldview Academy is, it is a Christian camp for kids ages 13-18 to learn about the Christian worldview, what a worldview is, and many other worldviews. This year in Chicago, the theme was servant leadership. Here is the website: www.worldview.org

How I am going to separate this up is everyday I will post another days journal entry. Today I will post Sundays, then tomorrow Mondays, and so on. By Friday you will know everything about my week at Worldview Academy!

Fun with littles

Today we are watching our Pastor's kids. They are 9(?), 6, 4, 2, and 10 1/2 months. At the moment, the youngest three are taking their naps. The oldest is on the wii and the second oldest is contently sitting on the couch watching. Earlier we went to the park down the street. Here is the link to some of the pictures.

https://picasaweb.google.com/106244703145241242733/20120609GreenePark?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLqDg6iDrL-ihwE&feat=directlink