Week 1 - Work Week
  
When I arrived at Crooked Creek I was blown away. They have everything...they have an indoor gym, a large outdoor pool and hot tub, a ropes course, a giant swing, two sand volleyball courts, a wiffleball field, a soccer field, a Frisbee golf course, bike trails, an indoor coffee/snack shop, a man-made pond, and so much more. This place is a paradise in the middle of the mountains in Colorado. Who wouldn't want to spend a week there? For me, I got to spend a month there and I was very excited. 
 

Small glimpse of the beautiful camp

"The Blob"

Ropes Course

Giant Swing

 My experience at Crooked Creek started with Work Week. Work Week is a chance for college students to come to camp before any campers arrive, to clean it up, and get it completely ready for summer camp to start. Young Life camp is an amazing experience largely due to the beautiful grounds that it takes place on. As soon as the campers arrive, they are blown away by the resort that they get to stay at for a week. Crooked Creek is amazing! This, however, requires a ton of maintenance and a lot of hard work. Long days were spent by all these college student from all over the country who volunteered and even paid their ways there to simply serve. It is truly amazing to think about the sacrifice that so many are willing to make because of the love they have experienced from God and their desire to share that in one way or another. 

For this first week, I was placed in a landscaping group. This group consisted of one other summer staffer from Florida, six work week people from Texas, and our boss, Lisa. Lisa was also going to be my summer staff boss. As we started working I began to wonder, how is this five foot nothing woman working harder than all of us? Lisa is not only one of the hardest working women I know, she is one of the hardest workers that I know period. She set the pace and the standard for us, and because of that, we were able to accomplish more than what was expected for that week.Throughout the week we rebuilt rock drains all over camp, pulled weeds, and spread fresh mulch over all the flower beds. This involved a lot of heavy lifting of rocks and a lot of shoveling. I love hard work like this because it requires teamwork and cooperation. I have been witness, on numerous occasions, to the fact that servant-like, hard work  breaks down barriers, makes each other vulnerable, and therefore allows the Holy Spirit to bond His people together. I think God-focused service is one of the best ways to form Godly community. By the end of Work Week, camp looked great, indoors and outdoors. 

Work Week was also a great opportunity to take notes about ideas for Young Life back at WSU. Young Life is well known for what it calls Program. This is a time when a couple people prepare a short, comedic skit, pulling a few kids up front to play a game in order to break the ice for the kids and help them have fun. A couple of the acts were very funny at Work Week and we plan to implement some of them into our own Young Life. In fact, this week (week of 8/27/12) my friend Eric and I will be using two of the characters we saw in Colorado for our first "Club" of the year...this Wednesday. I am very excited.

Work Week was a fantastic time to break the ice in serving at Crooked Creek. It was a great opportunity to start getting to know some of the summer staffers that I would spend the next month serving with and it really helped me break me out of my shell early. I knew that the weeks to come were going to be very special.

Next: Week 1 1/2 - Free Time