Day Four dawned about the same as other days, but when I climbed out of my cot at 6:30 am I felt like I had overslept. I had not planned to sleep that late on such an important day. The camp was alive with activity because today was arrival day. Before the end of our day, forty seven scout units would arrive, unload their buses, set up their tents and their campsites, attend meetings, and get a lot of things organized before bed.

Though it doesn’t always happen that way, this year, at first, the arrivals came slowly and I began to worry that we would, eventually, get slammed with many arriving at the same time. Later, while we did get very busy, sometimes with six or more buses unloading at the same time, we still managed. Our subcamp is not small, but even so, I lost track of how many times I walked back and forth escorting Scoutmasters to registration or troops to their campsites. I did take a short break to hop onto a Zoom meeting for a conference committee on which I serve, but since my presence wasn’t strictly required, and we were quite busy at the time, I didn’t stay in the meeting for very long. By dinner time we only had four or five units that had not arrived so I was told that it was safe for me to leave camp to eat.

At 8:00 pm I prayed before a planned meeting with all of the Scoutmasters, Senior Patrol Leaders, and our subcamp chiefs. As chaplains, we had asked that they bring their troop Chaplain’s Aide with them to this meeting as well and, after the opening prayer, we split them off and had our own meeting outlining some of the upcoming religious activities, a special Jamboree Chaplain’s Aide patch that they could earn, information about the Faith and Beliefs tents in the Jamboree activity area, and other religious information that we asked them to communicate to their troops. At the conclusion of our meeting we passed out Klondike bars and Bomb Pop popsicles.

Once that was done, I thought my day was pretty much over, until two scouts came into our office and told us that the youth female toilets weren’t flushing. And, since we always send two adults, I was asked to walk with one of our Commissioners to check it out. When we arrived, we asked one of the young ladies exiting the bathroom to clip of the chain showing that it was closed, and then we waited for everyone else to finish showering and doing what they needed to do. But, while we were waiting, the Adult women’s toilets stopped working, and then the Youth male toilets as well. There was much scrambling to accommodate everyone appropriately, and in the morning I learned that they had ultimately gotten a plumber out of bed to get everything fixed overnight well after I had gone to bed sometime after 11:00 pm.

After dinner I took some photos of our camp. As you can see if you compare the photos I took a day earlier, much has changed now that tents for two thousand people fill our camp.

Hopefully, we will meet back here tomorrow.

Blessings,

Pastor John