Centrifuge Recap

So the past week I was up at Bambi Lake for Centrifuge. It was my sixth time going, though my first as a leader. It was definitely a different experience for that fact alone. It's strange that people not much younger than myself are now coming to me for, really, life-changing events. One of the five guys we brought accepted Christ, one of the guys shared with me his desire to do some missions work, and one of the guys gave up his last shake (Which is the most popular thing at Bambi) to give to the Roma people and Canada (The focuses of this year's missions offering).

What was even more strange was having two kids from another church asking me to pray with them. All I can say is God works in mysterious ways, because those kids never would have sat in front of our group if it hadn't been for the night's seating arrangements. These are two guys who, really, I had only seen at camp prior to Friday night. But, during worship, they definitely were having some things revealed to them. They asked if we could go out and talk, and I obliged. Another guy from their group came with because he was also struggling. Their pastor came out and went off and talked with the third guy, and then these guys asked me to pray for them. It was amazing to just let God do His work in these kids lives. I mean, up until they asked me to pray for them, I had no clue what to say. I was just sitting there, praying silently over them about a situation I knew nothing about. But when they asked me to pray for them, God just brought the words they needed to hear. It's truly amazing to be a vessel for Him, because you know it has absolutely nothing to do with you.

On lighter notes of the week, it was strange to only know a few students prior to going. Obviously, when I went as a student, especially in my later years, I knew practically everyone. This time around, I knew, outside of my own group, just a handful of people, and even those were sometimes just by hearing about them or seeing them before rather than actually knowing them. But, even as an "adult leader," I met a lot of cool people. It's funny to look at Fuge from the leader's perspective, because I now like to joke that I just brought our guys so I would have an excuse to go to Fuge. It's just an amazing experience, no matter what age you are.

Sadly, the entire week was not so happy. A couple of kids went way past prank. It started with the Fuge Cup being stolen the first night (By some of the people that were in our cabin no less...thankfully it wasn't any of the Lakeside guys). Then someone spray painted one of the Fuge staff's vans. And then, Thursday night/Friday morning, a group of kids pulled canoes into the worship center, put the chairs in them, and proceeded to spray paint the rec field and silly string and TP the worship center (All the while leaving a note that said they weren't trying to disrupt worship and that they really did love God...while I can't judge on the second part, I can guarantee that these kids obviously knew what they were doing would disrupt worship, and that's why they put it in the note. They were merely trying to cover their butts). The camp pastor went off Friday morning, and rightfully so. I mean, the camp director, who was also the adult Bible study leader, was in tears trying to tell us about what happened. The kids who did it will not be allowed back to Fuge next year, which is definitely the right thing to do. This is the reason that we don't allow Lakeside students to prank...someone always takes it too far.

But let's not dwell on the negative, because this truly was an amazing week of getting close to God. This, moreso than any Fuge I can think of, was a big week of action. The whole theme, The Underground, was focused on reaching out to people less fortunate...the abandoned, the poor, the sick, the oppressed. I really hope that the guys of my group got the idea and will be able to act on what they learned this week.

Recap video will be up soon.