I love camp!

There's this ordinary college campus nestled in the southwest part of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. It has classes and dorms and a new union, a gym and a dining hall and a quad. It also happens to be home to the best middle school summer camp in the whole wide world. And for one week, it's anything but ordinary.

OK...I'm a little bias.

I've been to this camp a dozen times. And almost twice that if you count the various other conference locations I visited as a summer staffer, work crew and counselor. It's addicting. I started in 1991 just before my 7th grade year. The speakers were amazing, the worship was dynamic and the games were fun. The highlight of our free day was going to Wal-Mart to buy junk food, my hair felt like straw for two days after the shaving cream fight and the white water rafting trip was freezing.

Not much has changed since then. And I hope it doesn't. There's something comfortable about knowing what to expect when you visit a little tiny piece of home each summer, and it's wonderful. I see youth workers from all over the country only once or twice a year, and this is one of those places. They're friendships that understand what it's like to watch God work in the lives of teenagers and actually - just maybe - be a part of it.

This year, one of my funniest memories had to be the students' effort...ehem, and the obnoxiousness of other leaders...to set me up with another counselor.

It all started Tuesday afternoon. I was simply walking into the dorm lobby to help a student who kicked the desk so hard after he got mad at his friend that he may have broken two toes. Yes, you read that correctly. And as I veered from conversation with Tyler and Mollie, two nice counselors from Oklahoma city, it all began.

The 8th grade girls had already picked out several guys for me to date that week. It's their hobby wherever we go. So far, they had only found ones who were married or way too young. Until they saw Tyler. Having no shame or subtlety about it, they chased him down the hallway.

"How old are you?" 28.

"Are you single?" Yes.

And as they came screaming back to find me, "Heather! He's 28 and single...you're going to marry him and have 17 babies!"

You can't make up stuff like that.

"Girls...you're ridiculous."

"But Heather, c'mon, he's cute for an old guy!"

Apparently 28 is old.

Fast-forward to the counselor meeting that night. I joked with my friend Mac, who happened to know Tyler, that I needed to apologize for how my girls assaulted him in the hallway earlier that day.

"Yes," says Mac, "I saw them giving him a note that you wrote him in the cafeteria."

I wrote him a note? Yes, apparently, I wrote him a note. With my name, city and cell number.

I've already had several people ask if he's actually called.

In other news, here are a few pictures from this year...and I can't wait until 2010!