Church camp weekend...

Apparently, the March winds were running a little late, because instead of bringing April showers, we got May rain storms. At this juncture, rain storms are good, because we need something to make the grass grow so we can turn the cows out to eat it. Yesterday and today, we've had some good, warm soaking rains...

Friday and Saturday I went to a men's retreat at Camp Elkanah, sponsored by Calvary Baptist Church in Baker. Great camp! This is my second year going there, and this year was even better than last year. Camp Elkanah has cabins made of retreaded railroad cars, so we get to sleep indoors, and there's a big dining hall. The food was great again this year. Chapel is in a log building...

This year's music was performed by a local gospel quartet that calls themselves "Fisherman's Praise", and those guys can really sing. The wife of one of the tenors plays keyboard and she has written some of the songs that they do. She can sing very well herself, too...

The speaker was a guy named Luke Hendrix, who is a pastor, and fellow bicyclist, from Portland. He's a very engaging speaker, and talked a lot about our identity as Christians, and how the devil does his best to make us believe that our concept of ourselves has nothing to do with God. Au contraire! If we are to be the people that God wants us to be, we have to turn to God, and let Him be the guiding light in our lives! It's only through Him that we can truly weather the storms that life sends our way!

After Chapel on Saturday, I got to talking to a guy named Kurt, who lives in Pendleton. During the course of our conversation, I discovered that I'm not the lone ranger when it comes to my walk with God. Apparently other people stumble and fumble their way along, the same as me. Sometimes it's hard to believe that anybody else can feel the way you do. We both felt that Luke's words regarding our identity with God hit very close to home. I feel like I came away from the camp with a whole new outlook on life...

Luke said it sort of like this: "God will always love you; it's up to you to make sure that you are someone that God will like..."