beautiful things.

for God is my witness, how i yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. ~~philippians 1:8

dear 2012 staff.

i love you. and i say "you" instead of yall because because i love every single one of YOU and i want to make sure everyone knows this as they read it.
yes, i love the staff every year, but this is the most special one i've ever been a part of.
we're a family. we're the most beautiful picture of the idea of sisters in Christ that i've known in a very long time.
last year the staff was a clique. five or six separate cliques actually. while i had my own little group of friends who i loved, i didn't know any of the other staff. none of us knew how to BE if we weren't in our groups. there wasn't much encouragement going on. we never seemed to be serving together. sure we were all at camp together and were there to do the same job, but we just weren't on the same page. long story short it was a VERY difficult summer.
but this year we're a community. we love each other. and i don't just mean that we think we're all super cool people and really like being together(though that's true too!). i mean we LOVE each other. we pour into each other, we build each other up, we keep each other on track, we jump to help each other when anyone is struggling. we truly, genuinely love each other. and because there's all this love being spread around all the time, we help each other to better serve God and our campers. while everyone has a few people who they're closer to than others, we're still SO beautifully unified. speaking for myself, there's no one on staff who i wouldn't want to spend time with(you've seen me monday mornings at breakfast trying to decide who to sit with, right?).
at camp mccall, me and carrie's adventure rec group on our first day had to make a team "covenant pledge" to each other. i wrote about it here if you want all the details. basically we were defining the attitudes we wanted to have and how we were going to help each other as a team, and keep each other accountable to this pledge. our pledge was to be JUHST. yes it's an acronym and no it isn't spelled wrong. we had wanted to tell yall about it during orientation week, but without us even making a speech about it, i've seen the staff living it out all summer.


J: JESUS-LUV!(in order to really understand that, you have to hear it said. ask me or carrie to try to do it; it won't be the same as the guy who said it but maybe you'll still laugh. =] )
i see this every day. we love each other like Jesus does: all the time and no matter what. whether we're best friends with someone or have sat with them at just one meal all summer, we're here for each other.
and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.~philippians 1:9-11
 
U: Unity.
we are one big family. yes there are some small groups of friends. but it's different than how it's been. i feel like within the 31 of us, each person loves all 30 other people, and then we each have a few people who we happened to get closer to. unlike the cliques of the past, i haven't noticed drama between or within the groups. it's like God blessed all of us with smaller support systems within the big system. i've seen so many God-glorifying friendships formed this year.
we are all here for the same purpose, and we all want to push each other towards that same goal.
just as our bodies have many parts, and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body. we are all part of his one body, and each of us has different work to do. and since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others.~romans 12:4-5

H: Humility.
i see so much encouragement going around the staff. no one is ever pointing out what they themselves are doing great at; we're too busy praising each other. on fridays after the girls leave and cindy has us tell stories, i love hearing yall say what God did that week. everyone is always praising God for what's happening, instead of acting like we were the ones doing all this great stuff.
besides our attitudes, i've seen a lot of this silent H in the way we work together. whether it's letting someone else have a break because we see that they need it more than we do, or helping out a cabin leader who doesn't have a staffer that week when we aren't even in their unit, we do such a good job of serving each other.
this is my commandment, that you love one another as i have loved you. greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.~john 15:12-13
do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others~philippians 2:3-4


S: Support.
again, we all have our friends who we go to, but anyone can go to anyone. we've got each other's backs. everywhere i go i see people passing each other and asking how they're doing. and we actually want to know HOW everyone's doing. we want to know if someone's tired, or needs prayer, or has a great camper story. we laugh together, we cry together. if i'm having a bad day, i can instantly be uplifted by hearing about someone else having a good day. there's no one i don't feel right going to for something, and i would do anything for anyone on staff who needed it. we all help each other whenever we can, whether it's in our job description or not.
i remember during staff week, when erin P got up and asked us to pray for her sister. she said "i wanted to share this with yall because i know we're all here for each other." that was one of the first moments i knew that it was going to be a great summer. we were supporting each other then, and we've only gotten better at it.
God put us together, and i think we've made him proud. =]
as each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.~ephesians 4:16b

T: Trust. 
this is the hardest one for me. i consider it a small miracle that i've been so open with so many of you this year, and there are very few who, if i had more time around, i wouldn't share a lot more with.(there aren't enough chances for me to see and talk to everybody) i don't really know what to say about everyone else on this because it's pretty personal so how am i supposed to know how much everyone trusts the rest of the staff, so i'll just say that for me, i've been able to put a lot of trust in you guys and i feel like we've made ourselves pretty safe.
i don't think it's necessary to trust every single person on staff with every little part of you. but as far as camp goes, we should be able to trust each other to a point as far as we relate to camp.
for instance, if someone asked "how's your week going?" could you tell them honestly? if you're having a hard day, if you're struggling to love your girls, if you haven't had a good attitude about camp? or on the positive side, if you'd just had a really good talk with a camper, if God had shown you something really cool that day? not that it's a terrible thing to just answer "oh just great!" when it is, or "okay" when it's not so good. but i've found that it can be so encouraging, both to you and the other person, to share life together for thirty seconds or two minutes or however long you have.
example. the other day me and perri were walking to canoes and i asked how her week was going. she told me about what she'd read during her Jesus time that day, and both of us got to be uplifted because i got to learn something really cool, and she got to be reassured that it was indeed a really cool thing.(totally putting her on the spot here, but you should ask her about John 1:1)
or for a negative one. near the beginning of the summer, i was having a hard day, and chana asked what was wrong. i told her, and she just hugged me and told me everyone loved me and wanted me to perk up and be happy linda again. and my day got better.
so, to tie a bow around this little story, you don't have to trust the whole staff with all your dirty laundry, or any of it really. but for camp's sake, it can make such a difference to trust each other with the parts of our hearts that relate to camp. when we're open in both our joys and our sorrows alike, we get to build each other up and we're able to serve so much better than if we kept everything to ourselves.
carry each other's burdens, and in this you will fulfill the law of Christ.~galatians 6:2

so. back to the verse at the beginning.
i love you all, and i hope you knew that way before reading it here. sharing this summer has blessed my life ridiculously and every one of you has played some part in that.