Gee, Mom, I wanna go to camp

Ahhh, back from girls camp. This was my fourth year going up, and I finally got it right. I couldn't go the first day - Cameron was at Scout Camp and I needed to be here when he got back. I had to come home a day early - we were leaving on a family vacation. No set up, no clean up...now we're talkin'. We had a wonderful camp director (more on her later) and the YW Presidency was able to spend most of the time there, so I didn't feel too guilty. I'm the Laurel Advisor, so frankly, I'm just glad they'll let me come and hang with them, eat the food and make up cheers.

We're a small ward, and I think we are unique in that everyone really, truly gets along. I've been to camps before where the leader would slip off into her tent and sob quietly, unable to take all the contention any longer. I always put on a happy face before coming out though. But these girls amaze me. They have so much concern for each other, and I don't think anyone had an unhappy time. We laughed and told stories and just enjoyed being together. The girl's didn't want to go off to do Stake activities or be anywhere else - they wanted to be with us. We also had some previous YW presidents come up to visit, and a couple parents came up for testimony night. How cool is that?

It was a stake camp and the theme was Women of Worth. Each ward was assigned a woman or group of women from the scriptures, and then we just built our camp around that. We were the ten virgins - which thrilled me to no end, trying to make a cheer out of the Madonna song. Each night, a leader would do a devotional about the theme and on the night that I was there, it was Camp Director Canela's turn. She talked about how her first reaction when hearing that the five prepared women weren't willing to share was always "Well, why not? Sistah, share your oil!". I've always kind of thought that too. But of course, the oil is really our own testimony, our own faith, our own good works, and drop by drop, we have to fill our own lamps. We can't lean on the testimony of others, etc. For the handout, she gave us these:

It's an honest to goodness clay oil lamp from the Holy Lands! Made from the clay where Jesus walked! Like the ones the Ten Virgins had. At least that's what it said on the website where she ordered it from. Each lamp was wrapped in an Arabic newspaper. I thought this was the coolest handout ever. Canela even had lamp oil and a wick to show how it could burn brightly when there was plenty of oil. Cool theme, cool handout, awesome camp director.

Another reason Canela was so cool, and this is my favorite story from camp: She performed surgery on a Beehive. Picture this: A Beehive is complaining about her toe hurting; she stubbed it on a mossy rock in the stream and now the pain is just unbearable. And a bunch of the green moss is wedged under her toenail. Uh huh. In reality, she had an ingrown toenail that was so infected and full of green pus, I can't believe she came to camp.

A lesser woman (me) would have sent that Beehive home on the next transport, but not Canela. She pulled out the first aid kit, asked around for some toenail clippers and set up her own M*A*S*H* Unit. She had clippers, scissors, tweezers, alcohol, gauze, cotton, band aids, and one crying Beehive. All the surgical instruments were laid out on top of an ash-covered Dutch Oven (even one more reason to love Canela - the woman can cook!). Canela was so calm - she kept telling the teary-eyed Beehive just what she was going to be doing and why it needed to be done, how badly it was going to hurt and for how long. She just kept rubbing the girl's foot and trying to calm her before she cut into her toe like the field surgeon that she was. Another leader held the poor girl's hand and rubbed her back, and the rest of us pretty much watched in horrified fascination.

Canela made her cut down into the nail and into the pocket of infection. The green goo shot out of her toe. Using the hand-holding assistant as her scrub nurse, Canela asked for "alcohol", "clippers", "cutters", and "cotton and more alcohol", ending the surgery with some pretty vigorous squeezing to get all the infection out. Can't you just hear the Beehive crying? Post-op included a good soaking in some cold water, Neosporin, and a very impressive bandage. Maybe some Tylenol.

Seriously, I would have sent her home. Canela, you rock!

Oh, and then my final camp story is the miracle of me even making it home. I was going to leave with one of the visiting Moms, my friend Cori, after testimony meeting. It was late and we were saying our goodbyes, when all of a sudden, a Beehive smacked Cori right in the eye with the glow stick that she was waving around like Harry Potter's wand. It's just what Beehives do. Cori's contact flew out and landed in the wilderness. Now she's unsteady - the mismatched vision thing not working so well. So we decide that I should drive, even though I'm terrified of driving at night on canyon roads. And I'm kind of night blind. And there was construction going on, so the lanes were all screwy. And I didn't have my glasses with me. It was late, our judgement had lapsed.

We made it though. Cori held her hand over her bad eye, occasionally telling me to get back in the right lane. Scary! It was the blind leading the blind.

Good to be home.

How about you? What's your favorite camp memory, recent or long ago, wretched or heartwarming? Do tell.