FUGE Camp 2023 and God Speaking to Me

Just got back from a week of FUGE Camps at Ouachita Baptist University (OBU). Tab, Wyatt, and I (along with our church’s youth pastor, youth group, and adult leaders) served as the hands and feet of Jesus in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

This year, we did MFuge. MFuge takes a normal summer camp experience but adds missions to the mix. So in the afternoons, when in a normal summer camp you’d do recreation, we instead did missions.

One of our mission sites (we had two) consisted of playing with kids within a government housing project. We’d play (basketball, hula hoops, sidewalk chalk, etc.), do crafts, and share about Jesus. The ministry we did at these sites was 100% student directed. Our kids did everything while we parents, adult leaders, provided logistical support. This enabled our kids to love on the kids at the apartment complex while we kept on eye out on the site as a whole.

After MFuge, we’d head back to the university to shower, eat dinner, and then head to the evening worship. I loved the worship we experienced at camp. Super upbeat, loud, and the band had real drums. REAL DRUMS!!!

One of the things that really changed for me this week was in how I pray. The camp pastor, Chuck Butler, asked us to imagine speaking to Jesus when we pray. For him, this is something that is done in his living room, sitting face-to-face, on the couches with the coffee table down the middle. For me though, I imagined Jesus sitting beside me. Both of us sitting on the beach staring at the orange glow of sunset. As the wind blows off the ocean, cool and steady, I can just talk to Him. This somehow made prayer more personal, even intimate. I won’t forget how with Jesus by my side, I can tell him anything.

I will say it has been weird coming back to the real world. As our camp pastor said, we can’t live at camp forever.

While at camp, I felt that God was speaking to me in three areas:

• That I need to pull back from my social media usage during the day. What I see portrayed online versus what I experience in the world are two very different things. I’m not sure what I am going to do, but I need to work on this. Social media has become an almost constant through out my work day. I’m bored out of my mind at work. But it’s not good to be on twitter and Facebook all day either. When you start to view the world through social media, something is off.
• I want to write! I am a writer. Always have been. Working through what this looks like moving forward. Thinking about starting with some writing prompts in order to get going again. (Look forward to some fun writing in the future.)
• To touch back on my first item, I need to work on an exit plan for work. I feel like I’m working in a job where I’m ignored. I am not valued, listened to, nor seen as anything other than an answerer of phones. This has been killing me silently for years now. Beyond my moment of whatever happened three years ago during COVID (where I suddenly couldn’t speak much / experienced stroke-like symptoms without having a doctor confirmed stroke), I’ve long thought my job itself, hardly talking to anyone all day, has made it hard to talk / get my thoughts out. At this point, I’m just a beaten down individual who seemingly can’t get ahead in life (I don’t feel like this is true… but then I do. A lie from Father of Lies.). Need to change this.

FUGE Camp, with the youth group, was a solid experience for me. God used it to strengthen me spiritually, to show me things I need to change (see above), and even how certain individuals work within our youth group. I needed this. I was super reluctant to go… maybe even down right nervous. But I’m happy that I went. I needed the change that camp brought in my life.

So good.