Did Jesus go to camp?

Last night my two oldest children came home from a week at camp. More like 5 days, really, but who's counting?

Mad, my tween-age daughter (God love 'em), apparently had quite a moving experience.

"Mom, Dad, our last night there was so awesome. We had the most awesome devotion EVER. Like, we had to write down what we wanted to work on in our lives for Jesus and share it with our cabin and pray about it and it was like, so awesome."

I think, great! I know the word "attitude" was on that paper. That is what she is so excited to tell us. So I take the plunge.

"So, what did you write?"

"Well, I just wrote about being a good example for my three younger siblings."

There it is! The answer I was hoping for!

" But seriously, mom, dad, these girls in my cabin were sharing about their sick relatives and problems at home and then one girl, well, she started to cry, and then we all started to cry, and then we just cried and cried and cried and seriously, it was just awesome."

My husband looked at me as if he wanted to cry. I have never seen a man more dumbfounded than when his oldest daughter becomes a tweenager.

I just patted his hand and shook my head ever so slightly to let him know not to say anything because it would definitely be the wrong thing.

He knows I'll explain the way an 11 year old girl thinks once she is out of ear-shot.

As for our son, he talked about swimming, staying up all night, and how he's losing his voice. Maybe I'll get a few more days of quiet after all.

I must confess, my husband and I are a little disappointed that our kids didn't come home with this burning desire to be missionaries or share their love for Jesus with all of our (brand new) neighbors.

But I have to remind myself that one of the reasons we shelled out nearly our entire life savings to send them to camp was to make friends.

We just moved to a different state around the time school let out. No school equals no friends. The church we are attending had a few openings for camp and we both thought, what a great way for them to make friends.

And to quote Mad, "We have friends now and it is so awesome."

Awesome.