A little update for my first post back on the blog. Since I last posted, I moved out of my house in Atlanta, said goodbye to friends and church family there, brought my things to Kentucky, got ready to go work a summer of camp, worked a summer of camp (more on that below), returned back to Kentucky, attended an end-of-summer retreat in Alabama, drove over to Georgia to visit friends there, came back to Kentucky… and am now seeing friends and family and preparing for the move to Germany. I leave in 18 days!

It was an awesome summer with PASSPORTkids! camp.

I got to work on a team of 14 talented, capable, loving, cooperative, creative, fun, called-by-God young adults. The Kids East Team came from diverse backgrounds and included 3 international staffers, many former Passport campers, a few folks “brand new” to Passport, college and seminary students – all passionate about their work with children this summer. What a pleasure it was to direct this team through 7 sessions of camp in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. 

Especially meaningful this summer was the camp theme, “Life Together.” The camp theme guides every aspect of camp: the games we play in celebrations and recreation, the parties, the scripture passages in Bible study, the songs we sing in worship… everything. In Passport’s 20th summer of camp, the theme “Life Together” celebrated the gift of Christian community. We taught campers about what it means to encounter Christ, embrace community, extend grace, and to be empowered by God to continue the work of Christ in the world around them. Watch the short theme video below for a glimpse of the “look and feel” of the summer: 

“Life Together” connected with the children at camp – but more than any other theme in my 4 summers with Passport – it touched and challenged our staff. Working in close quarters with 13 other staffers in a “body of Christ” environment, where everyone has an important role in being the hands and feet of Christ at camp, makes “Life Together” immediately relevant. We dug into passages from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together each morning in our staff devotion and prayed and sang together in a practice of intentional community. Our staff had a week to serve alongside the members of the Hyaets community – an intentional community of folks doing life and ministry alongside the urban poor in Charlotte, NC. That week especially, but all summer long, our team witnessed and lived life together in one of its most intense forms. I learned so much about community and experienced God’s working in and through my teammates in mighty ways! 

This summer, the Passport camp community also joined in life together with our brothers and sisters in Malawi as we sought to understand the world water crisis and collected offering to support water projects in Malawi. Thanks be to God for this grace- and joy-filled summer! I am grateful to my friends at Passport for the chance to be a part of it all.

I will have more posts about projects I’ve worked on and progress toward Germany in the next few weeks!