What In Tarnation?!?!? In the Classroom

Riverside, CA; Nashville, TN; Charleston, SC; Denver, CO; Nashville again; and Mobile, AL. Those are all the m-Fuge camps that I have been to in the past six years. I have enjoyed each and every single one of them. I have grown from each and every single one of them. At each camp I have been ushered to the foot of Christ’s throne through teaching, preaching, reading, serving, and building relationships. A week at m-Fuge is exciting, exhilarating, and exhausting. You hit the ground running on Saturday (if you are a driver it is after a long day of driving, this year 13 hours, across two days). Sunday is training and Monday you are thrust into the mission field. For those m-Fuge newbies, this can be an eye opening and sometimes overwhelming experience. When students and adults aren’t at mission sites, they are in worship, bible study, or fellowships. There is a block of freetime right after ministries sites that lasts about two hours, however my track seemed to always be one of the last tracks back to campus so that time was more like an hour and a half. It was tough this year keeping up with all the activities and the online class that I am currently taking. Thankfully the rooms that we had on the campus of the University or Mobile had Internet access. There were two late nights as I quietly worked on assignments while trying to let my two roommates sleep. Despite that, it was all worth it.

I had an interesting experience on my track sites this year that I haven’t had before. When I got my assignment I was in a creative track, this would be a first if you didn’t count the year I was in the swing track which is a combo of all the tracks. When I got to my track room I and we got our itinerary it sounded like a combination of Creative and Social. During our morning celebrations we sat in social section. It seemed that our track had a bit of an identity crisis. Later in the week things became more complicated. The later in the week, the more and more my track looked like a swing track. To make things even more interesting our track was to visit two sites a day and we wouldn’t repeat any site. That would be eight different sites over four days. I think that is some kind of record.

Our first day on site was a nice easy step in to the activities of the week. The first site was Our Southern Home which was a pretty upscale retirement home. One problem here, however, our team of 20 or so students and adults walked in to see six residents sitting there. Made for a difficult ratio. We sang songs, painted finger nails and just talked with the six residents that where there. They didn’t seem too overwhelmed. The site was a good entry level service site. We had lunch at a local park and headed of to The First Baptist Church of North Mobile to play with their summer school kids. We had a fun yet disorganized time with the kids. Again this was not a difficult site but I really enjoyed talking with some of the kids.

Over the next couple of days I will talk about the other six sites that I got to visit. In the meantime you can take a look as some pictures from the trip.

Not everything was sunny and rosy but Pressed has already written about it at Avoiding Evil so I won’t rehash it here.

One thing that was different this year than in past was the last track time together. Normally students swap e-mail addresses and/or cell phone numbers but I didn’t hear a single student ask for either of those peices of information. Instead, those questions had been replaced with “Do you have a MySpace?” I do have a MySpace but I didn’t know the address of it so instead I gave a few folks the address to this site. So in the off chance that someone in my track drops by here, first of all, welcome, thanks for stopping in and yes, I do have a MySpace. It is here.

FYI today was the first day of VBS. This year’s theme: Arctic Edge. I am leading the missions time. I am tired but it is going to be good as well.

Later taters!

PS Thanks to Anna for posting some great posts. Hopefully she will make an appearance every now and then.