Arrival

I spent the 10th through the 18th at Honey Rock. It was a really great camp. All the guys in my cabin spent a lot of time together and we got to know each other really well. We were always the last group to go to bed because almost every night we spent time around a campfire talking and stargazing. When the moon set, the stars were incredible. I don’t have a lot of pictures, mainly because I didn’t want to take a digital camera to a lake or bog or to play basketball. I did get a few pictures at my cabin though. Here I’ve posted two pictures of Roz, our cabin night guard. The first is a picture of her with a can of her favorite soda, and in the second she is carrying a picture of our faculty member, Dr. Mark Thorne in front of the wailing wall in Jerusalem. He teaches Greek and Latin.  Dr. Thorne came for the second half of the week and did almost everything with us. Our group will be meeting together with him later in the year. I should also add that we had a really great group leader named Matt who is a Junior at Wheaton. He led 9th graders on wilderness trips at Honey Rock for most of the summer. He reminded me a little bit of Wooton Basset.

We did some pretty exciting things at Honey Rock. It really is a great camp. They have horseback riding (which our whole group did), mountain biking (which I did with Phillip, Jay and David and was really sore afterwards), sailing, archery, riflery and a lot of other activities. There were also challenge courses which our team had to work on together. In one we were strapped into a harness and climbed up a tall pole. Then we had to jump off the top of the pole and grab a handkerchief hanging in front of us, while the rest of our team stood below and held the ropes that kept us from falling. We also had to get our whole team over a twelve foot wall while some of us were given temporary disabilities.

Wednesday night we arrived at Wheaton. I moved all my stuff from camp into my dorm room. Mom and Dad and Andrew met me on Thursday and we spent some time moving everything into my room and doing laundry and getting things set up. Since then I have gone to a lot of floor meetings and events, and some speeches about what Wheaton is about and rules for residence halls. Fortunately, I was already somewhat familiar with the rules and with the layout of campus, so that has not been too overwhelming. Now I an just trying to make sure my room and my books are organized and that I am ready for classes to start Wednesday. I’m looking forward to classes starting, but I feel like if I don’t have everything organized before they start, I’m going to have trouble keeping up. I still do not know what clubs or groups I will be involved in or what kind of job I am going to get. There is an organization fair tomorrow, and a part time job fair Wednesday. I would appreciate it if you pray for me to make decisions about how to spend my time. I have a feeling it will be really easy to overwhelm myself.

I look forward to hearing from you all.