camp noah - day three

day three of camp noah was a most eventful day - it started with pouring rain, it ended with pouring rain. we're in the middle of a "tropical wave" which consists of rain for days on end saturating the ground and flooding everything everywhere. we're all wet. our clothes are wet. our souls are soaring, but the're soaked as well... cleansing power of tears.

yeah, i have to take it down a notch here... the tears have been flowing lately.

today i got to talk to my class about loss and grief, specifically around hurricane rita. my class listened to a story of one of the boys having to put his dog to sleep before evacuating because he wouldn't make the trip. another boy told the story i his aunt and uncle and how both died in the storms. the kids are rough and unrefined but they're soft and cuddly. the story i started telling last night before being forced to go to bed was about a group of boys who wrestle all the time and how every once in a while one will break off from the group, come over to me, wrap his arms around me, nestle his head in the crook of my arm, and say "hi mister tom" before quickly leaving to go back to punching some other obnoxious boy. it's enough to make a person tear-up on the spot.

another thing worthy of tears is our living quarters. as if it wasn't bad enough to be sleeping on mattresses one foot apart from each other on the ground in a room with 30+ other junior high boys. but today when we got home from camp and dinner around 9:30 the entier dorm was ripped apart because the facility had recieved 200 bunk beds and everyone was putting them together at once. the music was blaring, our personal belongings were ripped from our previous beds and put on shelves, and what was promising to be an early night to bed turned into a night of hard, sweaty labor putting together the beds. i so badly wanted to sleep but ended up sweating instead... at least i got some good pictures out of it = )

camp noah is exhausting me like i never expected, but it's also making me quite humbled seeing "my boys" and their lives.

i'm going to bed but plan on another post soon... till then.