Our First Group

For those of you who have never been to SOUL, participants arriving is kind of a big deal. When the group got to Up River last Saturday, the entire staff ran out to greet them and to haul their bags into their rooms for the week.

After everyone got settled in, we played some get-to-know-you games and had a short devotion. Even though we have a small group this week, and most of them know each other, the get-to-know-you games were a lot of fun. For the sake of not ruining any surprises for any participants coming to Yadkin County or Goldsboro I'm not going to tell what the games were, just know that they were pretty great.

Sunday morning we split up and a group went to Piney Woods and another one stayed at Up River. Both of the churches were kind enough to host a luncheon for us afterwards, so we got to spend time getting to know some of the people in the community. And, of course, the homemade food was absolutely amazing.

That afternoon we played some more games - group-building games this time. Then it was time to go over our drills for Monday. Monday was football day.

As we prepped for drills, some of the participants volunteered to lead stations, and others volunteered to lead devotions and to be group leaders. I was supposed to be helping with the Defense station.

Later that night we had our first worship session with out speaker Zack Lane. Up River Friends lead worship with their praise band, then the staff did a skit, finally Zack started speaking. I forgot my journal Sunday night, so I don’t want to paraphrase or misquote anything, so I won’t say much about the session Sunday night. After the session we split up into “family groups”. Family groups are small groups that are meant to keep the conversation going after the session, and let people fully soak it in.

Since Sports Camp was starting early in the morning, we sent the kids to bed at about 10:30. Once they were in their rooms we had our staff meeting and devotion. Instead of a regular devotion, the staff this year has decided that we should have more of a bible study. As our first book, we picked the book of James to go through. Finally we got to bed, I think I speak for everyone when I say we were all a bit excited, but also nervous/curious about what camp was going to bring the next day.