Day 2 of RCP

So 4 talks down, 7 left. Last night we went deep and I challenged the students to consider accepting Christ as their personal Savior and Lord. Many come from strong Christian homes but I know that God is at work in many of their lives. It’s been awesome.

I’ve got a few stories…

Last night after my message we had a break for snacks before our last group game. We had cheddar cheese gold fish and fruit punch capri-sun juice boxes. Pretty narly if you ask me. I took a little extra up to my room even. So, as I was making my rounds between the groups of kids last night and this group of girls begin saying something. At first I couldn’t understand what they were saying with their mouths full of gold fishies, but eventually I realized they were saying “ZIPPER” and I was really confused. Then, it hit me…my zipper was down and this little girls (4th or 5th graders) were calling me on this…oh gezzz. My face turned a bright shade of red and I ran inside to take care of business.

And then, this morning something really cool happened. There is this 4th grade boy who is pretty awesome. After I spoke this morning he raised his hand and asked me what his name means. Last night in the message I shared this story…

It starts way back with a 19-year-old American guy who joined the army and he goes to Korea to fight in the Korean War. While he’s there he meets a girl and dates her for awhile, gets her pregnant. Then when his tour of duty’s over he goes home, never to be heard from again. Meanwhile the mom, the girl in Korea – this is huge in her life, because dating an American guy is kind of socially taboo. Then she’s pregnant and then it gets worse when the baby’s born. The baby’s born with lighter skin and light wavy hair and she stands out. And this is bad. Her family kicks her out of the house. Society rejects her. She met with curses and kicks and people spit on the mom and the little girl. This is a tough life.

I don’t know what kind of pain that must have been going on in the mom’s mind to do this but when the little girl is seven years old, the mom finally had enough. She abandoned the little girl in the street. So this little girl is running the streets at seven years old. She’s dressed in rags, she’s eating out of dumpsters. All she ever knows is rejection. They had a word for her in the Korean language she was called again and again. She thought it was her name for awhile. It’s the worst word in the Korean language. It means “ugly alien devil”. That’s who she thought she was. All she knew was rejection.

The first night of camp I had a met a kid named Nolan. I really like that name and a few weeks ago I told Melanie how much I liked that name and so she looked it up and it meant “Chariot Fighter, Champion, Noble” and so I had told Nolan this and as I spoke last name I shared with the kids their names mean something too. I even brought up in my message Nolan and what his name means and it flowed really well with what I was talking about.

Well back to this kid this morning. His name is Pavan and I had never really heard that name before until I moved to Yuba City. Our city has a huge Sikh Indian population and I thought this was a name I had heard adult men have, so I started to look it up and both sites I found said it was Indian, that it was Sanskrit and meant PURIFYING and BREEZE. This really got me thinking. I found a link to a web forum with someone who shared that he “just received his ‘spritual name’ which was PAVAN Singh. He said Pavan means: pure, sacred, graceful, the carrier of prana: the breath of life.” I found the site of some Guru who has written a book about this name, and it’s mantra, and his says that the carrier of prana is the carrier of the life force for this Indian culture/belief. Crazy.

Regardless of all of that, I can’t wait to tell him that his name comes from Sanskrit, one of the worlds oldest languages and what another great meaning…pure, sacred…breath of life. It totally fits the two definitions that I found. Wow.

The student are at game time. Our counselors here are absolutely amazing. Be praying for them today. They are doing an amazing job with their campers for sure. Now, I must get to my final prep for my message tonight.