Creek Week

As you may have noticed, I haven't been around as much lately. Summer has always been a busy time for me and my family. My latest journey has been to Falls Creek , the largest youth camp in the nation. It has been estimated that 10% of Oklahoma's population will have attended camp at Falls Creek in their lifetime (and there are several other states that attend also).

Falls Creek is special to me for several reasons. After moving to Oklahoma, I was able to attend camp for two years as a teen. While in college, I became a certified lifeguard so that I could spend my summer working at Falls Creek as part of the Recreation Team. It was a very memorable summer. Then, my husband & I spent nearly every year of our marriage at Falls Creek in the summer or fall with the church youth groups he was leading. Though he is no longer a youth pastor, we still mark off a week for Falls Creek every year on our calendar. Hanging out with teenagers is always a blast and it is truly a place of spiritual renewal. As if the wonderful time of worship and Bible study aren't enough in itself, I find that being away from the daily grind of the world--no telephones, no internet, no television, no laundry, no unfinished projects, etc--makes it a truly wonderful escape.

This year, there have been major changes at the Creek. For years, over 5000 people would gather at Falls Creek to sweat in the outdoor tabernacle during worship services. It was hot, very hot, but it never stopped anyone from coming. This year, there was a brand new state of-the-art air conditioned tabernacle awaiting us. People wondered if Falls Creek would be the same (okay, I wondered too!). It was BETTER! It really was.

Here is a photo of the new tabernacle. No, I didn't use some sort of freakishly large wide-angle lens, but used my photoshop wizardry instead. :)

(click to enlarge)

And I couldn't finish this post without mentioning CORNHOLE! When our youth minister brought out a couple of big wooden boards with holes and bags full of corn, I thought he'd gone a little crazy. It didn't look like anything that belonged at youth camp. Family reunion, maybe, but not a camp for teens! I couldn't have been more wrong. Everyone loved cornhole. I loved cornhole!

It's almost like horseshoes (minus the metal stick and...um, the horseshoes. Okay, maybe it's not really like horseshoes). The object is to get the bag of corn into the hole. If you get a bag on the board, you get a point unless the other team also gets on the board & your points are then canceled out. If you make an actual cornhole, you get three points. When a team gets 15 points, it's over.

We ended up having a cabin-wide tournament and almost everyone participated. It was great. By golly, we loved it so much, we even decided to have cornhole t-shirts printed (designed by yours truly). I'm telling you Cornhole is going to start sweeping the nation! ;)