Confirmation Camp Overview

Tomorrow I will write in more detail about the bread baking at Confirmation Camp yesterday.  Last night I made this Facebook post which gives an overview of a more in-depth piece of writing that will come in the future:  "At some point, I'll write more and include pictures, but let me just say that out of the chaos of baking with 44 middle school confirmands came amazing bread: yeasted and quick breads, gluten free and wheat flour breads. We talked about what it means to be the leaven in the loaf, and then we ate our loaves. We talked about how God is forgiving, just like the process of bread baking, and then we made huge batches of bread without a recipe. It was amazing."

It's amazing to think that my total time with the confirmands creating bread dough was only an hour:  roughly half an hour with each group of 22.  Here I am with a pan of their dough that had risen, and I reminded the whole group what we had talked about, what it means to be yeast, how something tiny can bubble up into something that will nourish a whole community.

But there were other memorable moments too.  I led a group on a labyrinth walk.  Lutheranch has the most unusual labyrinth I've ever seen:  instead of clearing out trees to make the labyrinth, the labyrinth winds around the trees.  To get to it, you walk up a little trail.  It felt completely remote, yet we could hear the group of confirmands who had gone swimming in the lake and a cow at a nearby farm.  It was wonderful.

I also want to remember how many people were enthusiastic about art.  I'm sure that some of them were sketching and doodling out of boredom.  I pulled out my sketchbook during the morning baptism large group session, not out of boredom but as a way to stay focused.  One of the girls asked me about my sketching at break, and I offered to share supplies.  I showed her various markers and gave her a blank page out of my sketchbook.  Her grandmother was one of the adults there, and she thanked me for taking time with her granddaughter, but it was a great experience for me too.

The meals have been good, and I have been surprised at how much food middle schoolers consume.  We had fresh fruit at breakfast yesterday, and it was all gone by the time I walked through the serving line at the end.  I'm not complaining, mind you.  But I'm almost sure that my generation, when we were younger, would have walked right by that fruit.

Of course, we wouldn't have had the same wonderful mix of fruit.  I don't think I tasted fresh pineapple until late in my college years, if then.

The moon is full, and there's not really a great set up for writing in this room.  Let me go out and enjoy the view of it one last time, in this rural Georgia setting.