the end is near July 23, 2008

So I only have 2 1/2 more weeks of camp left! Kinda crazy, but I am a little ready to go home and see all my family, etc. That will be nice. My last day is Aug 9th. I found out i get to take a trip out next week and its ALL rockclimbing all week!!! yes! i am so thrilled.. and we do multi-pitch climbs and its at this really pretty place called eleven mile canyon and maybe one day at garden of the gods even! they are high schoolers, and we will only have 6 campers! 2 girls, and 4 boys. so, im’ pumped about that. anyways.. keep praying everyone stays strong and healthy and safe and we glorify the Lord with all that we do and say! love ya’ll.

dominique

pictures!!!hooray July 23, 2008

this is Sean, he was so precious!

so i got my camera back! yea. so great. i sure did not like not being able to take pics. so.. here’s the pics from my last group of campers

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049336&l=0378a&id=68602654

My A-5ers on their way up Mt. Bierdstadt, a 14000' mt!

Group number #2 of my campers- A-5 July 16, 2008

Last week I had my second group of campers for the summer. They were middle schoolers, and we did a camp called A-5, which basically stands for five different adventures. Everyday we did a different activity but then would come back to camp and sleep there. Middle schoolers are definitely Different from high schoolers. They required a lot more attention and asked a million trillion questions everyday all about the same stuff. But for the most part they were pretty fun. They also didnt go as deep as the high schoolers in devos and what not, but it was still good. Its cool to think that we hopefully helped shape their young years which will greatly influence their up coming high school years. Some of them talked about becoming more “spiritual”, so… they are at a very moldable age. Ben, a great guy, was my co-counselor. We both got frustrated at a times, but for the most part I think we handled it well.

The first day we hiked a 14er, which is a 14000′ mountain… um yea. well. we almost hiked it… but…it was drizzling on us and dreary the whole time until about 13000′ and then it started SNOWING on us! yea on the 7th of july! the kids were freezing and so we kinda unanimously decided that we wanted to head back down. ben and i really wanted to finish and a couple kids did, but for most part they were miserable. we could have def made it if it hadnt been snowing.oh well. Tuesday we did our high rappel on camp. the kids really enjoyed that. you go backwards down about a 150′cliff. it’s got the best view on camp. the hike up to it is a little steep but not unbearable. Wednesday we went kayaking at Lake dillon again. the weather was beautiful for it, nice and sunny and warm. we played swedish fish tag with them and they had a lot of fun that day too. On Thursday we went mt biking, which i was really kinda anxious about. The first 1/2 mi of our trail one of the girls’ backs was really hurting, so i turned around and we walked back to the trailhead site and played games with one other hurt girl and the rest of the group finished the trail with Ben leading. they went around once more and then we had lunch. Ben was going to lead one more time around after lunch but then his back started hurting. i was not too excited about leading since there were a bunch of daring young middle school boys who would want to go faster than me and I was still a little scared about crashing again. but they were all kinda tuckered out from already doing the trail twice, and i never crashed, so it was really good. friday we went rafting with noah’s ark and it was great! the river has dropped some, but it was still great. overall it was a good week, tiring and sometimes seemed long, but good. i am back at camp this week, running the adventure activities and stuff. tomorrow we have the morning off. i am SO excited because we are going horse back riding! i’ve been wanting to go all summer. we have like 25 horses here at camp and tmw we finally get to go.. and on a fun, non-trail staff ride. and then after that we’re going to paint pottery in our little pottery shop. im stoked about that too! so.. yea. sorry no pics yet. i did borrow my friends camera and got a few pics, but havent loaded them yet. good news though!!! my camera will be fixed for free. took me a while to get it sent off and the warranty found etc since i’m out of state, but my good ole sis saved the day again and helped me out. they got the warranty today and i should be getting my camera back in the next week or so. thank you jesus!

oh, i did post a few pics of the different adventure activities and random stuff on facebook, so… take a peek.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049044&l=363fb&id=68602654

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049067&l=028e1&id=68602654

well, til next time… adieu!

dominique

sweet R&R and good friends July 6, 2008

(disclaimer) last week while rafting my camera unfortunately got wet! so i am hoping that it gets fixed soon. i sent it off, but until then.. no exciting pics ;(

This past week was a little bit different because our main camp was close for the 4th of July holiday. Because of this, we didnt have any activities to run on camp, so… the adventure staff that was not leading our adventures trips worked it out so that half of us would stay on camp and work the meals for the groups here, and then the other half could have that half of the week off and then we would switch. While we were at camp it was still relaxing because we didnt have all that much to do. We had some free time, so that was nice. Then i had off the wed-fri night, so i went down to denver and saw two of my friends, alisa and amy, that i worked with at quaker ridge camp in woodland park, co, a few years back. i drove down to fairplay to stay with my old bosses from the bakery, the macfadyen’s and their four kids for the night. we went down to this really neat place called kite lake that was still mostly frozen and full of beautiful aqua looking snow. it also had 3 trailheads to fourteeners (14,000 ft mts that people climb, also called peak climbs). we didnt really hike but it was really beautiful. and we saw some old mine shafts on the drive up too which were really cool and interesting to think about how they did that back then. we played charades and i had my own room and bathroom downstairs at their cabin, which was super nice. then michelle, amanda and i went down to a little mt. town, alma and shopped around a bit a store called the motherlode and sat at a coffee shop for a bit. we then went to a goat farm with about 30 of the biggest goats i have ever seen. they were nubians, and they all had LONG ears. it was funny. we had some delicious fresh goat cheese and i bought some wonderful goat soap. the people had 10 cats in their house (2 of which were sphinx’s, which are hairless cats… weird and kinda gross looking!), 2 big dogs, and 3 baby goats in their house!! little crazy so that was a really nice, fun relaxing time with their family. so sweet to let me stay with them and hang out. i then drove down to buena vista and went stay with two friends from camp, bekah and kim, at kim’s really! rustic, hardcore cabin that her grandparents live in during the summer its only water was from a hose that ran from the creek near by, there was an outhouse, electricity only by a generator, which we couldnt get to work so we just did without it and used a kerosene lamp and our headlamps. and the shower was a garden sprayer and you would put a make shift curtain around you in the woods! i didnt take a shower but the cabin was amazing. her grandparents bought it from a mining co years ago, 40 acres, and now it’s surrounded by nat’l forest! they are the only people who own land out there. its secluded and so cool. i felt like i was back in time or in some little magazine or something. the kitchen was little and cute and there were two loft sleeping places with cots, like 3 wood burning stoves, a little table and a seating area. i LOVED it. so so cozy and quaint. then i drove back to camp and later that night 3 of my co-workers/friends drove down to golden to watch the 4th fireworks. we were decked out in patriotic attire. we watched fireworks from the side of lookout mt. and it was really neat because you could see so far out and we were above the fireworks. they were far away so it was little bursts of color everywhere plus all the lights of denver and all the surrounding cities. we sand patriotic songs as well. it was quite fun. then today, sat, we went to golden again and hung out in a park and slacklined, which is basically like tight roping across webbing, and were going to tube down the river but it was kinda rainy and overcast so decided to wait on that. we got to play some sand volleyball with a couple from golden and it was really fun. i hadnt done that in a long time and i loved it.

tomorrow my next group of campers come! i am leading the trip with a guy named Ben who is also really cool. it is middle schoolers and the trip is called a-5. we do a different activity everyday and then sleep at camp every night. well be mt biking one day, rappelling and rock climbing, climbing a 14er!, rafting, and kayking, so a busy, but hopefully fun week. please pray for our safety and for the kids lives to be changed! thanks so much. hope all is well wherever you are.

dominique

my first group of campers/ H2Go July 6, 2008

So, sorry its kinda been a while. I had my own first group of campers for a trip called H2Go. It was July 23-28. I led the group/trip with my co-counselor, Matt Griffin. We had a great time. Well.. i guess i should just speak for myself. i know i had a great time; i think matt did too. our campers, which were high school age, all arrived on Sunday afternoon. i had 9 girls and matt had 4 boys… yea he had it a little easier. but a lot of the kids already knew each other from school, so that was nice, not as many awkward ice breaker types things that had to be done. we first played games with them and what not to get to know them etc. then on monday morning we left for lake dillon in frisco, co.

we car camped and kayaked there for mon and tues. it was really fun. we had mostly all good weather on monday,few very short random spurts of windiness and teeny bit of rain, but for the most part, sunny and nice. i had never kayaked except for our short 2 hr little demo in staff training only a couple of weeks before. so it was kinda funny that i was leading a trip and trying to teach kids something i barely knew myself.

but each time we went out it seemed to click a little better. and water is kinda my thing, being a lifeguard for 5 stinking years of my life and all.. except the water in co is SOOOOOO cold!!!! straight up 50 degree snow melt. yikes! no swimming here. which is really strange for me because ive always grown up with warm water that you could/would swim in.we had personal devos that each kid did on their own everyday and then every night either matt or i would lead a group devo with everyone contributing. we made delicious hobo dinners (to find out what these amazing things are look at my first blog)on monday night which everyone loved and had camp fire.it was really nice. the kids were well behaved too. matt and i had decided it would be cool to do a sunrise kayak on tues morning, but we didnt tell them anything. so we woke up at 5 am on tues morning and surprisingly non of my girls complained at all. we all got in out kayaks which had frost on them!from the night before. everyone was a wee bit chilly, but we kayaked out to a little island and had granola and gorp as we watched the sun rise over the mountains and lake dillon. it was really beautiful.

kayaking campers (carolyn in middle and matt, co-counselor to right)

here comes the sun...

We then kayaked some more and played game at camp, packed up, and had lunch etc. On Wed we went to Golden, Co and tried to roll white water kayaks in a pond at a park. You basically learn how to flip your self back up right after you’ve flipped over in the river. I kinda got it, but not completely. It was fun and the kids enjoyed it too. And there were these amazing white water Olympic kayakers practicing in the river across from us. It was so cool to watch them. THey were really good. I have videos and pics of them on my facebook. Then on Thursday we went out to Noah’s Ark white water rafting co and rafter on thurs afternoon. It was nice rafting with them b.c they basically did everything for us. We pulled off the river and camped with, and they cooked, cleaned and were kinda entertaining, too. We just sent up our tents and then that was all. The guides were really cool and Matt and I got a little time to hang with them and talk while the kids hung out and played games. The stars were amazing and it was so neat to be able to hear the river as we fell asleep. We got up and had a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee cake… yea we were really roughing it. Then we packed up and rafted for a few more hours. We had a lot of fun; we had splash wars b/w two of our boats and one of our guides was a music theatre major so he sang lion king songs and everything. That was great. On Friday night for our devos we had everyone talk about what they had learned and how they grew etc, and then told the kids if anyone needed to talk with matt or I, we would love to talk to them. On tues night, I had shared my testimony as the devo and told how my Mom passed away in dec 07 and how that had been really hard. After that, one of the girls, Carolyn, told me she was sorry, that her Mom had passed away when she was 10. So I told her I would like to talk to her sometime hopefully during the week. Well, on Friday night, after devos, we talked for about 45 min. We cried and reminiscenced about our moms and the pain from their deaths,etc. It was a great time. At the end of the time I asked her if she had ever accepted Christ as her Savior, and she said no, and I asked if she wanted to and she said yes. It was really, really neat. My bosses wife, Annie, had just asked earlier that week what she could be praying for me about. So I just asked her to pray that I would be approachable to the kids and open and that they would feel comfortable talking to me. And she prayed that I would be able to use my story/testimony. Totally an answer to prayer. It was really encouraging to me because it kinda confirmed that I was where I was supposed to be, and that God did have a purpose in everything for my life, even the really hard and painful things, like losing my mom. I shared I Cor 1:13 with Carolyn. Its always been a meaningful scripture passage, and was really fitting for our conversation.
It says, “And praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. You can be sure that the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. So when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your benefit and salvation! For when God comforts us, it is so that we, in turn, can be an encouragment to you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. We are confident that as you share in suffering, you will also share God’s comfort.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. miss and love you guys.

dominique

link to more pics and videos via facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047792&l=e06eb&id=68602654

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2047986&l=317a3&id=68602654