Second Row, Piano Side: Summer Camp, Part II

GA District Summer Camp

"The Bell"- wake-up calls, mealtimes, activities, and chapel.  Always stolen the last night of camp.

Cold Showers- no hot water until the 80's.

Learning to Swim- at the public pool in Adrian, Georgia-with the girls because we didn't believe in "Mixed Bathing" (I did wash my hair in the pool a couple of times).

Morning and Evening Chapel in an Open Tabernacle-swatting gnats and no AC.

Morning Hikes with Bro. Paul (children's camp)

"Little Tabernacle"-since torn down.

Ethel Anderson 1, 2, 3, 4.

The First Kiss (I was 13 and hated it!  Ran back to the dorm and cried)

Girls Dorm 1 and Falling in Love for the first time.

The Kiss (beyond the sign that read, "No PDA" and loved it:))  Getting caught for PDA and hated it:(

Fighting with girls who would later become some of my best summer friends.

Fighting with girls over boys who would disapper from my life like a vapor.

Making great friends and saying goodbye, to some I never saw again.

Getting saved at an altar, while kneeling on a sandy, concrete floor. 

Waves of revival lasting into the early morning.

Candlelight Communion.

Campfire services.

Prayer and Praise with hands uplifting high.

Total Surrender.

A HOLY place where I came to embrace a personal God, the place where mama and daddy's religion became faith to me.

I have since questioned, doubted, and often shaken my fists in the face of a good God...

but my mind often wanders back to the summer of '73 when I came to know Jesus, to '75 when I knew full-surrender, to '77 when I knew, that I knew, that I knew.

I no longer attend camp meetings...I no longer volunteer for service there...

 I no longer feel at home there...

 but when by choice I visit I am keenly aware of the presence of a Holy God,

and the mere sand that I stand upon is Holy Ground.