CBLI 14 Recap One

Another great year of Central Bible & Leadership Institute has come and gone. At the moment, we are knee-deep in illness, but so very thankful that the Lord graciously allowed it to come after we returned home instead of while we were still at camp (heard of one family there whose two year old was sick five times in the night in the cabin with no resources to clean up or deal with the mess - groan, those are toughies). But, we are still rejoicing in a wonderfully blessed experience. During the beginning of the week, it seemed like I was constantly fielding the question of how long until we go home. But, during the last half of the encampment it shifted to "I can't believe we only have x days left. I wish we could stay longer."

We started off our trip with a brief visit to Grandma's house (where we picked up a borrowed cot for the encampment) and then traveled on to our friends, the Olsens. Saturday morning, we received word that we were not in Beech cabin as anticipated, but had been moved to a Shagbark cabin. The Lord, again, was gracious as this was a much better fit for me and the boys. We were in a small cabin called Papago, where there are two rooms and a shared bathroom and kitchenette. We thought we might be able to forego the use of the cot, since there were two bunk beds in our room, but it turned out the bunk bed rails were non-existent (because the older style beds, which used to have super thin uncomfortable mattresses, were paired with full-size twin mattresses), so I refused to allow Trevor to sleep on the top bunk and insisted we squeeze in the cot after all. This turned out to be a God-send, since Trevor fell out of bed Monday night, between the cot and the bunk bed, and I spent a good hour or so unable to sleep for thoughts of what might have happened had he been on the top bunk.

Sunday morning I was able to play with the band during the morning worship service. The only draw-back was that when the band members were allowed to return to the audience, I couldn't find a place to sit and had to stand at the back. In the end, I took my horn back to the van and didn't end up joining them for the rest of the week.

Once again, our favorite free-time activities seemed to be time spent in the rec-room of Catalpa playing air hockey and ping pong. The air hockey paddles were cracked and broken, so we made a run to Walmart and purchased a set to donate to the camp.

After our trip to Walmart, we had to stop by J.J. Blinkers (our favorite costume and gag-gift shop in Antioch, IL). Trevor picked out a smoldering cigarette butt and Sean picked out a whoopie cushion. Our cabin mates (an officer couple from Iowa) got a good chuckle when we left the cigarette butt on the kitchen table for them to find in our absence.

We also visited the pool once and the zip-line twice. Trevor went off on his own a few times, but usually stayed with us. He intended to do the high-ropes course, but when he discovered that there was only one other person going and it was a girl, he opted to head to the archery station.

I enjoyed my Bible class with Linda Himes on the book of Hosea. Trevor made an insightful comment on the trip home, saying "I love being at camp because it gets you all excited about studying the Bible during classes and stuff, but then when you get home it is hard to keep up the same excitement about the Bible and going to church." Too true, Trevor, too true!