Thursday June 19th

Ugh.  I am so sick.  And miserable.  And I can't sleep, because no matter what position I lie in, it will only take a few minutes for something to start aching.  So even though it's two o'clock in the morning, I might as well be writing, right?  And as long as I don't tell you about it, you'll never know if a sentence was interrupted by a run to the bathroom, or how long this post took to write because neither my mind nor my eyes will focus. 

So let's go back a couple of days.  I somehow got myself roped in to helping with the Webelos Day Camp for our District. (Long story.)  I was in charge of the games station, so on Monday evening we took the family over to the park where the day camp would be held.  I had been assigned a little triangle of grass in which to play games with 27 boys for an hour - six times.  I just wasn't seeing how I could keep them all happy for that long until I started looking beyond the little triangle of grass. (No doubt nudged by a higher power.)  I discovered that across from the grass park was a lovely expanse of wilderness with a creek running along one side.  Perfect!  The Captain and I came up with a game where the boys would start at the top of a hill on the park side of the wilderness, make their way to the creek, pick a rock, and carry it to this dead tree.
The catch was that they had to do it without being seen by the "seekers," who were boys with whistles and a piece of red streamer wrapped around their middle. If the seekers saw any boys, they would point at them and whistle.  The boy then had to drop his rock and go back to the creek to try again, or go back to the hill and try again to get to the creek.
It seemed like a game that would not only keep them happy for an hour, but also give them a chance to run around and get dirty.  I went to bed grateful for the divine inspiration that helped me come up with something for my six rotations of 10-year-old boys.

The next morning I got up bright and early and set out for the park.  During the night my brain had come up with a couple of concerns about my game.  My first and biggest concern was rattlesnakes.  They are found in our area, and they are extremely poisonous.  We don't see them much in developed areas, but my little area of wilderness was a perfect spot to find them.  Not that I wanted to, of course.  My second worry was just that my ideas always seem good until I involve other people.  That's when they usually fall apart.  But I kept reminding myself that my idea had come from the Lord, and that meant that it would work.  My third concern was my popsicles.  Silly, I know, but I had brought a cooler full of Otter Pops to give the boys at the end of the game, and I was really worried that by the time I got to the last group of boys, I would be handing out lukewarm sugar water instead of popsicles.  So I said a prayer (repeated many times throughout the day), that these concerns of mine would be taken care of. 
And they were!  No one saw a single rattlesnake all day.  They did see some rabbits, a wild turkey, a water snake (harmless), and a dead deer that was reported to me by every single boy in attendance.
My game worked extremely well.  There will always be boys who whine and complain, but I didn't worry about them because they would have been complaining no matter what we did.  Most of the boys had a great time and proudly showed me their rocks.  Some of the boys who quickly made it back to the tree decided that instead of sitting around waiting for everyone else to show up, they would see how many rocks they could bring back from the creek without getting caught, and were "keeping score."  One boy got caught when he was almost back to the tree, and dropped about eight rocks at his feet.  I had a hard time not laughing.  Another boy went to the wrong dead tree and waited there for most of the hour with his rock before we finally found him.  Only one boy got lost (something I hadn't even thought about including in my prayers), but he was quickly found and brought safely back to the park.
Some of the popsicles did melt, but there were always some at the bottom of the cooler that were still frozen, and I a had frozen popsicle to give to every boy.
I know that the Lord heard my prayer and answered it in every way.  He even took care of problems I hadn't thought to pray about.
I went home sunburned and happy, and it wasn't until the next day that I started feeling sick, which is no doubt another sign of God's hand in my life.  If I had gotten sick during day camp, I would have had a lot more to worry about than melted popsicles.