Time well invested... The Weird and the Brave.

At camp i was struck by two campers especially. Both were juniors, but will remain nameless.

One was a kid who took creepiness to a level i could barely imagine possible. Over Challenge Camp 2007 he took awkwardness to strange new places. This year he wasn't as bad, but as i thought about his behaviour, i grew to see it as a positive trait for camp.

Either he is always weird beyond the norm, and thus showing that camp has a ministry to the creepers (keeping me safely in a position of security). Alternatively, and even better for camp, he turns up his kookiness for the week. If the later is the case then it shows the freedom he feels in the setting of camp. A freedom to be as weird as he wants.

If this kid, when surrounded by the people of God, can reveal his uninhibited true self for only seven days a year. I'm ok with that.

The second kid scared me at the start of the week. He was a big year 8. By the second day of camp the fear remained. He was giving the leaders nicknames.

By the middle of the week two things happened that brought me closer to the kid. First we made a hemp bracelet together. We were connected by the wrist for an hour. Most importantly... his bracelet kicked ass!

Second, I spent another hour with the kid at the flying fox waiting for him to jump.

If i was a crap storyteller, i would tell you... we walked up, we sat about, we came back down.

The actual tale goes like this... I told him we would be side by side any way he traveled up or down the hill. I helped him put on his harness and then put on my own. We walked up the path slowly together (getting our photo taken prior to fool anyone into thinking we jumped either way). We stopped halfway, but decided to keep going to "check out the view." We sat up the top for a while. He was crapping himself. After some (read a lot) convincing he strode (read quivered) to the edge. After two aborted attempts, getting to the edge of the platform, i lived up to my word. We slowly walked down the path again. A process just a troublesome as the journey up the hill.

The guy at the top of the mountain said that being brave isn't having an absence of fear, but doing something despite that fear being present.

I'd be honest in saying that i walked down a mountain path with a damn courageous kid.