Disco D for the D

There are a few vocabulary terms that you will need to master before you will be able to understand this post:

Village- the name we give to each section where the kids are placed based on age

Discovery Village- the youngest kids at Adventure Camp, ages 5 and 6

Mayor- the head of the section that handles all the big stuff for that village

Deputy- a specific member of the program team assigned to tailor activities to one village 

L-Team- this is our Leadership Team made up of senior staff

Activity Staff- usually also a part of L-Team, they lead the activities and handle site work and cover chalets when leaders have an hour off (they run this place)

The majority of L-Team have their days off during the week, so other staff are pulled to fill in the gaps for the evening when that person is gone. I have my day off during the week, and so do all of the deputies. Usually, when a deputy has a day off, one of the activity staff affiliated with the village that deputy is from will take over for the evening and do those announcements and make sure that programming continues to run. This week, we are a little low on spare activity staff, so I became the Discovery Deputy for the Day as Parker took his day off. It was magical. Disco has all of our youngest kids complete with their lack of full motor control and outrageous capacity to laugh and love. I have actually never worked with Disco before, so it was really fun to step in for the day not knowing exactly what we would do. 

Evening program (fun times after dinner before bed) was supposed to be outside, but the weather has taken a turn for winter here apparently, so I decided to keep them inside since their little bodies really can't handle the cold. Instead, we went into the Lodge and occupied the upstairs living room. I put Disney music on the boombox, closed all the curtains so that it would be a little darker, and gave every kid a glow stick. It was the most beautiful kind of chaos I had ever seen. There were 17 little ones and probably 5 to 10 leaders all dancing and running around in circles, screaming with joy. If there were ever a moment when I was sure that God was delighting in something, it would be this one. Yes, a number of them did run directly into one another, and yes, more than one person was whipped in the face with a glow stick, but these are minor details compared to how amazingly wonderful the glow stick madness was.

This past weekend, the program team went to WalMart and all got Duck Dynasty shirts. I don't know how it happened, but it became a competition where we are all wearing our shirts every day at all times and the one who keeps his/hers on the longest wins. If you are ever caught without your shirt, the person who catches you will count to 30. If you can get the shirt on before that person gets to 30, then you are safe. If not, you are out. I am in it to win it. This shirt doesn't even smell that bad yet (thank you early Canadian winter times).