Good Bye Summer

Where does time really go? It's a question we all ask and then getr cought up in the fast pace of life before we ever really answer it. I don't know that i have an answer to that question, but i definatly ask that question to myself frequently. For example, this summer only seemed to be three or four weeks long, which brings me to the thought: the busier you are, the faster times flies. In that case what did I do this summer tht made time fly? Well...... there is no short answer to this question. My main jobs were programming assistent and part lifegaurd. Since lifegaurding is rather self-explanetory, I will explain the role of programming assistant. Basically I was thr right-hand woman to several of the directors this summer. I helped set up and tear down games and activities, find whatever they needed, run errands in town for camp, ect. The list goes on. However, at camp when thre's a need its all hands on deck, despite your official job description. Therefore it was not unusual for me to help out with kitchen, housekeeping, or a host of other odd jobs including counseling. I enjoyed my jobs very much; it was often fast-paced and anything but monotinous. The small amounts of freetime i was blessed to have quickly filled with hanging out with friends, sleeping, reading and swimming. I made new friends, caught up with old friends and stayed connected with old friends. I laughed. I sweated. I cried and tasted true sorrow. I was taught lessons. I was repeatedly humbled. But most of all, I grew this summer. The laughter came from the simple pleasures of life; the sweat came from hard work. The tears and sorrow came from the unexpected loss of a friend from camp, Terry Eaton. With his wife he prayed for, encouraged and displayed the love of Christ to me and my fellow outfitters. He will be missed.
The lessons God taught me, including humility, were hard and I am still a work in progress. Some things He is working on in me (that I would appreciate prayer for) are: patience, self control and not complaining. These are lessons I am sure I will be learning my whole life.
Overall it has been a hectic summer and I am quite ready for fall. I know I haven't included specific stories, but hopefully I will type a couple up soon. Thank you to those covering me in prayer. We all need the Fathers help so desperately! God Bless, Hannah.

Where did June go???

So June was gone before i hardly realized that it had come! One of my favorite times of the year and its over! sigh! However life must go on and all good things must come to an end to make room for more good things. Camp has been such a blur of activity, no exaggeration there! We had our first two weeks of camp and thus far everything is going smoothly, praise the Lord! So far this summer i have been life-guarding and programing, which is doing a lot of odd jobs around camp. It has been so great and i truly love my job this summer! God is so good to us!
Our pillars book for the summer is Perelandra by C. S. Lewis. Though i have yet to really start the book i have heard many good things and am excited to read it. There are no classes or homework for the summer which is a very welcome brake. :) We finished our Precepts class on the 15Th of June with a bang. For the last assignment we had to put together a visual and a speech for the things we had learned in the previous eighteen weeks. It was a lot of work but it summed up everything we had learned so well.
Another great fun thing in June was my 21st birthday! and it was so great thanks to all of my awesome friends and family. Thank you all it meant a lot to me! And i when i say a lot i really mean a Lot! :) On my actual birthday i was finishing lifeguard training and driving home with to fellow staffers who were wonderful and bought me an ice cream cake! My absolute favorite kind of cake! Then since training took almost the whole day my fellow outfitters took me out to Applebees and that was one of the highlights of my month!
Again i can't express how fast the summer is seeming to go by. Thank you all soooo very much for your continued prayers and support! It truly means so very much to me! God Bless!

Wow! I seriously can't believe that the month of May is gone already! It seems like just yesterday it was May 1st. As some of you may know May is my very favorite month of the year. As sad as I am to see it go though i am still thoroughly excited for June to be here as it is my second favorite month of the year. Yes summer is finally here! Campers will be arriving soon and homework and classes will be done soon for a few months.

The theme for the month of May was humility. What more can i say on this? Except that God has certainly guided the themes for the months and May has been no different. I wouldn't say that i have learned or been through anything exceptional on this subject but God has certainly been giving me many quiet reminders and subtly teaching me the ways of being humble, though i still have so far to go as humbleness is a life-long journey.

On May 16th through the 17th we(many of the staff at Bair Lake plus the outfitters) had the opportunity to travel south to visit the creation museum. We drove the six hours and spent the night at Potters Field (a local Christian camp) in a Tepee while it rained all night. That was quite the fun and memorable experience. Then the next day we got an early start and spent the whole day at the museum before returning that night to camp. It was a long day but well worth how tired it made us. At the museum we saw a planetarium that was awesome, did a walk-through a vast amount of knowledge and walked through their botanical gardens and petting zoo. My favorite part of the museum was the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eve section. Thinking about the first marriage and family and how God had originally designed it to be. How the world began so perfect and how Heaven will be perfect as well.

Life has been busy and i fall into bed exhausted every night but life is good and i am so happy to be living and working for God every day here at Bair Lake Bible Camp. He is truly so good to me!

The theme of April was intersession, and it has been quite a month of learning. Our pillars book was, "Reese Howells, Intercessor" and it has probably been my favorite pillars book so far this year despite how convicting it has been. It is a biography of a welsh man that followed God's specific calling to the life of an intercessor and all the great things that happened in the world because he followed God. I have recently been enlightened on the difference between a prayer warrior and an intercessor. A prayer warrior can start and stop praying for things at their will, whereas an intercessor prays for what God tells them to pray for and they don't stop praying until God gives them the victory or tells them to stop. Also they often live the life of the way of the people they are interceding for. Then in a sermon i recently heard on intersession i learned how Jesus' whole life and purpose was and is interceding to the Father for us. Therefore if we are all called to live a life like Jesus then it is reasonable to say that we are all called to a life of intersession. True our life will not look like a carbon copy of Reese Howell's, but we need to be continually abiding with God and giving Him utter and complete control of our lives so that He may lead and guide us in the way He has planned for us. It is so hard to truly live like i have given God complete control of my life but it is a continual prayer of mine that i will die to self and God will live through me. This is no easy prayer as God is slowly starting to test me and teach me how to die to self.
Intersession was not the only subject in my life for the month of April though. I have also been studying a precepts course on Genesis 3-11. the last few lessons have been specifically on the serpent, sin and death, and what Jesus did to save us from the results of our sin which is death. It has been both interesting and eye-opening to match and compare scriptures all over the Bible that come together to give insight on a subject.
Also this past month i with the other outfitters had the opportunity to visit Adam Reid's (a fellow staffer and BLBC) family and the campus of CMU. We got to meet a woman that worked with campus crusade who lead a ministry that specifically reached the Greek inter-varsity groups. We went on a prayer walk down main street with all of the Greek sorority and fraternity houses. It was exciting to see and hear about a ministry that God has been working in and opening long-closed doors to.
The above has been just a small taste of my month of April. I wish i could expound more on it but that would take pages upon pages to cover. Thank you all for your prayers i have been so blessed by God in this program thus far. I am greatly looking forward to summer and am excited to see the things that God has for me in the coming months. I am praying that your summer will be as great as i am sure mine will be!

It's NOT about me!

It seems that God has been starting to open my eyes a bit more to how much i make life about me! It's sickening how much i think about myself on a daily basis! I am often thinking about what my needs are and how they will be met. I have made life about me for so long (my whole life really) that it is first nature to me. I often do it subconsciously! God has been hitting me a lot lately with the concept of dieing to self. Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24. I have been trying to picture/define what it is to deny oneself completely. What does it realistically look like in my daily life to deny myself. I recently read an example a friend wrote about when things in life get unclear we are tempted to pull out our own plans or "road maps" to follow rather than God's better plan that He has for us. So with that concept in mind, would denying myself be giving up my self-made desires, plans, schedules and dreams, and not fall back on them when God has decided to not show me the next step in front of me? Living examples of how this might look in my life are: getting up earlier to be able to have longer quiet times, giving up comforts that mask as daily essentials, possibly giving up areas of volunteer work, changing my schedule to make room for more reading of the Bible rather than socializing, not going back to college, laying life-long ministry/career desires and dreams on the alter of God and not filling the new empty space with new dreams and desires... I'm sure the list could go on. This is just my thoughts on denying myself in relation to God. I also wonder how does it look for Hannah Parcher to deny herself daily for the sake of others? Could it mean: letting my roommate keep the house the way she rearranged it because she obviously likes it that way, letting people be right and not arguing with them saying their wrong(whither they are or aren't), not altering my physical appearance simply because some of the people i love prefer me not to and because i love and respect them so much i should respect their desires and wishes, working harder or perhaps longer so that someone else won't have to do it(whatever it may be) for a change, changing my schedule so that others don't have to change theirs, letting someone else lead an area simply because they are better at the leading or just to let them lead that area for once even if i love working in that area... again the list could go on and i am still just beginning to discover what it means and looks like to die to myself on a daily basis. I simply pray that God will continue to be my great teacher in this matter. Will you pray with me on this? Thank you, and please feel free to let me now what God is currently teaching you and how i may pray for you. "But encourage one another day after day as long as it is still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." Hebrews 3:13

As usual i sit down to write about my life in the last month and i am at a sudden loss as to what to say. What is so interesting in my life that people want to read about? I know there must be a lot to write but my mind draws a blank. Sure i can update you on classes, book clubs and work but i keep looking for extraordinary, crazy cool stories to tell that just aren't there. I am beginning to realize its all in how you view life. Do i see it as mundane and dry? Do i believe that God is not really doing anything that exciting and special in my life that is worthy of taking time to share with people? Do i believe that i as an individual am not really special and extraordinary as a person, someone that is just coasting through a boring and average life? Do i believe that i am NOT someone that God has picked for a crazy, full, abundant, fruitful, fast-pasted life that constantly displays the wonders and goodness of God?! MAY IT NOT BE SO! I am learning for the first time in my life to believe that i am special. That i am more than a screw-up. That God desperately loves me and has a unique, and exciting life planned for me! That when i screw up (which is a daily thing) God forgives me in more than word only. He is not looking and waiting for me to mess up so that He can punish me. He is not in a constant state of seething anger at my desperate wickedness. Although it's true that He hates my sin, He also understands that i am not perfect, that i will mess up in life, and He is so patient with me. He picks me up, brushes me off, and uses my mistake as a lesson, and brings good out of it! While writing this the song, "everything" by Lifehouse came on the playlist and i stopped a moment to listen to it. The lyrics are amazing. It says,
Find Me Here
Speak To Me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That's leading me
To the place where I find peace again.
You are the strength, that keeps me walking.
You are the hope, that keeps me trusting.
You are the light to my soul.
You are my purpose...you're everything.
How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
You calm the storms, and you give me rest.
You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall.
You steal my heart, and you take my breath away.
Would you take me in? Take me deeper now?
How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
Cause you're all I want, You're all I need
You're everything,everything
You're all I want your all I need
You're everything, everything.
You're all I want you're all I need.
You're everything, everything
You're all I want you're all I need, you're everything, everything.
This song is how i should and am learning to view life and my relationship with God. He is everything to me and He sees me as special, beautiful, and His child!

February

Dear Friends and Family,
It is also official that as of March 1 I have a terrible case of spring fever. Please pray with me continually for the warm weather to come soon. It is encouraging to see the snows melting away and the robins flying around. I have also emensly enoyed waking up to the sound of birds singing again in the tree by my window. The one and only downer to this thaw is the extreme amounts of mud that exsist everywhere. However it is but a small price that I am very willing to pay for the sake of having the sun out again in all of its glorious brilliance. Yes, summer is my favorite time of the year and it is finally just around the corner! Kids are already signing up for summer camp and there is a small, low hum of ecitment beginning to fly through the air here at Bair Lake. It is steadily getting louder and more ecited! It you haven’t picked up on it yet, I am bubbling over with a contagous exhilaration for summer camp that I hope you all catch!
Another thing I have recently enjoyed was our last pillars book, Secrets of the Vine, by Bruce Wilkerson. It is a small, easy-to-read book that I finished in about two hours. Don’t let the size fool you though, its impact is far larger than its size. We were challenged to read John 15 as many times as we could while reading the book and I can’t express how much the added to each other! The book helps explain different things about grape vines and vineyards that give you a new understanding for the words Jesus spoke to His disciples in John 15. As I have all of the other pillars books we have been reading in the last several months I would also highly recommend this book.
Our outfitters February month theme was abiding. We learned in our Thursday bible study and pillars book club more about how to abide in Christ and the benefits as well as the necessity of it. It is something I am still learning to put in practice. The months are flying by faster than I know and it seems I scarcly have time to grasp the concept of one month’s theme before the next one hits me full force.
In my last newsletter I explained in depth about my year-long project that I am doing as part of my program here. I am in the process of collecting different recipes as part of that project. If you have any favorite family recipes please feel free to send them to me and maybe it will make it into my devotional. I am looking for dinner, breakfast and appetizer recipes. My email address is heparcher@yahoo.com. Thank you very much for your help in this area.
I and my fellow staff members of Bair Lake recently returned from a three day Michigan Christian camping conference in Holland, Michigan. It was so encouraging and exciting to get to know other camps and do some networking with them. I was also tremendously challenged by the guest speaker, Ron Hutchcraft. His messeges can be heard online at, www.michiganchristiancamps.com. If you have the time I would strongly encourage you to listen to them. They were excellent.
God bless,
Hannah