Murphy's Law

I'm interrupting my "Rewind" series (which have taken quite a while to get through because I'm hardly at a computer long enough to write them) to share about the retreat I worked on Monday and Tuesday where most everything that could have gone wrong did.

So I'm in Chattanooga working on job applications, seeing friends, and helping out people whenever I get the chance. Example, Jerry asked me to work this Monday/Tuesday retreat because most people have already started school and he really needed people to help because it was a full retreat. Ellen Huffaker and Stephanie Sizemore haven't started school yet for the semester, so we had just enough when you added in Daniel Gamble (who could only work on Monday) and Matt and Tim Bond (who had to work around their class schedules and trade off).

The group was the 9th and 11th graders from Whitefield Academy, a Christian school in South Atlanta. Before they get there, Daniel and I move mattresses around from cabin to cabin because they were using certain cabins, but not others. And in case you were wondering, mattresses are pretty cumbursome and not easy to move...so moving several at a time proved to be a challenge! But we did it and head back to the kitchen to start prepping lunch, only to find out that the water is out for most of Lee Pike. To make it even more ironic, this is the 3rd time this summer that the water has been shut off while we had campers, and for this case retreaters, at camp. So Jerry and Stephanie rush to Wal Mart to buy all of the bottled water they have in stock. In the meantime, Daniel and I fill up trashcans with lake water and distribute it to buckets so they can at least kind of use the toilets....Buckets of water are harder to travel with that mattresses, if you were wondering. We finish that task to find out that they are using 2 different cabins than we thought, so we head back to rearrange the mattresses just in time.

The rest of the retreat ran fairly smooth...we used disposable plates, cups, etc. for lunch and dinner, which made the clean up for us even easier. Between the 4 of us that could work on Monday though made it tiring to keep waterfront open because we had to work the whole 3 hours, but it was doable. In the end, it was fun to be back up at camp and I definitely felt like I earned that paycheck!!!