Down In the Valley

My oh my has it been a busy two weeks, friends!

First, I left Nashville a couple weeks ago and headed for Montreat to lead a small group during the second week of this summer's youth conferences. Just like college conference back in January, this was my first youth conference at Montreat. Not on purpose really...we were just always busy when my church's youth group went. But, anyway. It was such a wonderful experience. I spent 3 hours a day leading a small group of 26 high school youth. Some discussion of keynotes and such, some just hanging out and having fun, some eating Dunkaroos (thanks, Black Mountain Dollar General). And as it turns out spending a couple summers as a camp counselor is excellent preparation for small group leading. Seriously though, I met so many wonderful/enthusiastic/inspiring youth, and on top of that met some awesome fellow small group leaders, made some YAV connections, spent some time with friends from Davidson, and got my fill of energizers (not that there's such a thing as too many of those...). And I mean, I tell ya. These conferences I keep going to keep directly applying to my life. Wondering Wanders? Searching For the Signal? Sheesh, Montreat.

From there I headed down the road to camp. Camp was...so so wonderful. But weird. Wonderful to see many of my close friends that are still on staff there, but weird to not be on staff with them. I was one of the first aid folks for the week, so I didn't get to do a ton of camp-y stuff, but I did have a thoroughly entertaining sea weed (or...lake weed?) battle with some 8 year olds in canoes on Lake Refuge. And I learned a new blessing. If you're interested in blessing your food a la Sponge Bob Squarepants, you just let me know. It really was wonderful though. Lovely to see the people I already knew and fun to meet some new ones. Hard to leave yet again, but I've got some more thoughts on that coming later.

Annnd approximately 7 hours after I got home to Davidson from camp, Mom and I were on our way to Ohio, from whence we'll be heading to Michigan tomorrow. I was telling my mom in the car ride up here that I feel like a lot of great/difficult/meaningful things have happened in the last two weeks, but I'm not quite sure I've had the time to process it all. So, we'll see what ends up on this here blog in the coming weeks. There's the last two weeks, and then the fact that when I get back to Tennessee in a week I'll have just one more month left in Nashville. After that, a week and a half in Davidson and it's off to New Orleans! I s'pose one day maybe I'll be in one place for a while...

Love,
Allison.

On the road again...

Come Saturday, I'll be heading back to the homeland (aka North Carolina) for three-ish weeks. I'm fortunate enough to have two weeks of "service to the greater church" built into my job description, largely because of the fact that most of PSF's students are gone for the summer. Workin' my way down I-40 I'm going to lead a small group at the Montreat youth conference next week, then a few miles down the road I'll spend a week volunteering at camp. After that I'll be using my remaining vacation days to go on a family reunion in Michigan.

I've realized that I have really mixed feelings about these upcoming adventures. Don't get me wrong, I'm eagerly awaiting rounding a curve on the interstate and catching my first glimpse of the North Carolina mountains, and getting to spend two weeks there. And I genuinely enjoy spending time with family (which I count as a major blessing). But I've also become quite attached to Nashville. And the other day I realized that, taking into account my upcoming traveling, I essentially have one month left in Nashville. One. That's not very long. At all.

And things will be different this time around, in the mountains. Montreat is familiar enough, but this will be my first time at a youth conference and I'm responsible for a small group. My only time spent at camp has been when I was on staff (not counting the half-week I went for way back in like 1995), and this time I'll be just a volunteer for the week. Seven days is a lot less than two months.

Adding to the strangeness of this year's camp experience, today I learned that camp's Site Supervisor (aka Maintenance Magician) passed away last night. Besides the fact that I'm pretty sure Dennis could fix anything that broke ever, he always just drove camp from project to project in his red truck waving and smiling and making friends. Surely something will feel a little off at camp this summer. For a long time probably, because Dennis, if you ask me, is a pretty irreplaceable person. Dennis, if you're reading blogs up there in heaven, we love you and we'll miss you so much. Thanks for being a wonderful person and for everything you did for camp. And to whoever happens to read this: please just keep Dennis' family in your thoughts and/or prayers, and throw a few prayers in the direction of the Camp Grier family and this year's summer staff as they start the summer off on this sad note.

All that said, as I mentioned in the beginning I think I'll still love my time in North Carolina and Michigan...I just didn't anticipate having such mixed emotions, I guess. Someone told me once, just a few weeks after I'd moved here, that I would fall in love with Nashville. And I'm fairly certain he was right.

We'll see how it goes, this processing that's going on right now. Not being ready to leave, but knowing how important to me the places I'm visiting are. Maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself, too. I do have all of July and a week of August to soak up Nashville after these upcoming adventures...

Love,
Allison