Our friend Cass just released a new album called Wide Open. It is a compoloation of all the theme songs from NLR from 2001 – 2009. It sounds really good…and you can buy it at the NLR store.

Week1 is drawing to a close. We are finishing up the video and will be duplicating it soon. (if your interested…its 3:49am right now….)

Overall this has been a rough week. We started a blog for NLR called MCP Live, which has been really good, people have responded to it well, but with all things new there are some issues to work out, that combined with Kyle (or photographer) having to go home for a couple of weeks because of a back injury made for a tough start. Kyle is back now…so Kyle is building some new systems for our pictures galleries, Daniel (who came on last minute as a photographer in case Kyle could not make it back) is dong the photography thing. Grace is doing a great job with the Blog and Photogrphy Activity Class, next week she will start on some big design projects, and Kristn is doing the video stuff. I guess that another part of why this has been a hard first week is that i have never had 4 people working for me before, so im trying to learn how to be a good team leader….and it’s not that easy!

So, week1 comes to a close, im ready to get some rest this weekend and have a smoother week2.

Backwards Day.

Every day at camp there is a theme…School Spirit Day, Crazy Hair Day, etc. Today was Backwards Day.

I walked into the bathroom to rinse out my coffee cup this morning & there was a little girl in there standing backwards at the sink. When I walked in she had this sort of guilty/embarrassed look on her face. She quickly spun around & started washing her hands.

“Must be Backwards Day,” I said as I noted her backwards shirt & hat. She excitedly admitted it was & we talked about that for a few minutes. (She was pretty gung-ho about Backwards Day.

As she left the bathroom, I caught her out of the corner of my eye, spin around & walk backwards into the Dining Hall. It was then that I realized that she had been trying to figure out how to wash her hands while standing backwards when I walked in earlier.

This is why the Junior campers (3^rd-6^th graders) are most often my favorite. They get so excited & enthusiastic about things like Backwards Day. She’s probably been walking backwards all day long.

Well, it’s 11:29 pm & we have survived 2 weeks of Staff training & Day One of Summer Camp. Well, I say “we”…Ben’s actually still at camp working-I have retired for the evening & am looking forward to curling up in bed. The past 2 weeks have been something of a whirlwind. Last-minute staffing changes, training our Summer Staffers, getting our own jobs done, and sneaking in a date night & a trip to Sam’s…that’s what we’ve been up to.

Ben & I are each involved in Resident Staff Small Groups again this summer. The Summer Staffers are divided into small groups, and each small group meets once a week at a Resident Staff person’s house. It’s an hour for them to unwind, vent, eat yummy snacks, relax in a “real” house-not a cabin…  We are looking forward to getting to know our groups better this summer, and have already enjoyed having several of my (Beth’s) girls over to the house to do laundry. Please pray with us as we form relationships with these staffers, and for our conversations as we welcome them into our home.

These days at the beginning of camp are so full of energy & excitement…over 200 3rd-12th graders invaded our quiet vally today…and we are excited to see & hear what the Lord does in their lives while they are here!

I’m working on NLR’s new blog, check it out at www.newliferanchblogs.com/blog

The url may be changing, but you can get a sneak peak. Im still working on it, so don’t complain about how hard it is to read the black on green!