If someone needs help, you help them; talk less work more.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

We had a great day yesterday.

We spent the day out at Camp Collins; Camp Collins is our YMCA resident camp, and it is located on the Sandy River in Oregon. When people ask me about Camp Collins I like to say, "Camp Collins is where the magic happens and friends last forever." 

We closed down the entire association and spent the day giving and receiving trainings, spending quality time together, empowering and encouraging one another; it was a long day but a good one.

We had a training on Sunday and then Y-Day on Monday.

The Sunday training was on program development, we had a bunch of staff at that training. After the training was over they stayed to help setup for Y-Day, not getting done until around 10pm. 

As I am sure you already know, I am a country kid. Country folk don't get too excited too quickly about things to quickly. We tend to take things in stride. 

When I was a kid we didn't have digital cameras, but we did have instamatic cameras. They were cameras that had film in cartridges and you just put a cartridge into the camera spun the knobby thing on the top of the "instamatic camera" and Wa-La you could take a picture; then you just dropped off the film at one of those 1-hour processing sheds and in 1-hour you had your pictures back ready to look at. the only problem was, living in a part of the country that only had 3-people per square mile, we didn't have one of those 1-hour processing sheds; well that isn't exactly true, we did have one, it was only 185-miles away. So our film processing was a little longer than 1-hour, it was more like 168-hour processing. When your instamatic takes 167-hours longer to process than it should, you can just imagine what something that wasn't instamatic took to get. 

We learned very early on not to get too excited about things too quickly.

When people ask me why I talk to myself I say, "Because growing up I didn't have anybody else to talk to. You might say, "what about your sister Katie, why didn't you just talk to her?"

To that I respond, "Because she was too busy talking to Dilbert, usually telling each other secrets where they had to stand really close together to tell them, like lips touching close. I never knew anyone could ever have that many secrets or take that long to tell them; I thought they were weird that way.

We used to have a saying out there in nowhere-ville, "Nobody got hurt, nobody died, it is all good." 

We had another saying out there in nowhere-ville, "Never leave a person stranded." If you saw someone on the side of the road broken down you stopped and helped them. It was really important to do this, since it might be 3-days before the next car came along. It could end up being a matter of life and death. 

If someone needs help, you help them. 

GI-Joe (This is the camp name our North team gave him, not his real name but his camp name, everyone has a camp name. It may not be the one you would give yourself, but you get one just the same.) was tasked with setting up and tearing down all the things that need to be setup and torn down for a big event, why the "Y" didn't have an organized setup and teardown team I don't know; as I like to say, "It is an opportunity to improve." 

Anyway, the North team saw Gi-Joe needed help and jumped right in. They didn't quit until it was all done, like 10pm all done. They went to a training from 8am-5pm then worked until 10pm that night. they got up the next morning, helped get everyone from around the association situated, went to Y-Day from 8am-4pm and then helped teardown!

Quick note, I was not there Sunday and only showed up Monday. I had a good nights sleep, so it was easy for me to be in a good mood. the "North staff" had little sleep, but as Esmerelda likes to say, "We brought sunshine and rainbows to a rainy day and loved on everyone.

When Darryl and I got to camp we saw GI-Joe was a bit overwhelmed and we said, "Don't worry, we got you. What do you need?" and we went to work. 

If someone needs help, you help them.

One of North's Mantra's is, "Teaching a community to truly love its neighbor." The YMCA association is our community too. How do you teach a community to truly love its neighbor? You talk less and work more. 

I am so humbled and honored to be part of such an amazing group of people. 

I ruminate on this group that I like to call family a lot. 

Do you ever ruminate on the group you associate with? 

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger