5 July 2025

This week the young men at church went camping together.  When they started planning the activity, I asked D if he wanted to go, and he thought hard about it, and after some agonizing, he told me that he did want to go, but that he was probably going to change his mind and I should not let him.  When it did get to be time to go, he did indeed change his mind, and we had many conversations about it for the two days before he finally decided the night before that he was going to go and we got everything packed and ready to go.

When he came home, it turned out that he'd kept a journal during the trip.  He helped me decipher his handwriting so I can include his record here. 

6/30/25 Monday, First day at camp

Today we got there with an extra hour lost because of a replacement windmill piece was ... taking up both lanes. When we got there we chose camping spots, & set up tents. I set up the tent ... pretty easily, but it took me a ... 15 minutes of work.  I sat around, wishing we had a better shelter from the drizzle. We have a tarp that was strung over 2 picnic talbes pushed togher. Kiliohu showed up & I helped set up his tent.  Skip forward 30 minutes of effort and we are huddled beneath the tarp eating food.  5 minutes later the rain pauses.  For a long time & all the teachers & ... decide to go the the lake.  No one returns.

...for an hour, & then me & Kiliohu decide to go check on them and we get ....their & we see Andrew & Carter who are running back.

Can't sleep. Rain too hard. 4:30 pm

(followed a graph of 'fun' over 'time')

All time is an approximation. .......  

Tuesday 7/1/25

We went caving & had breakfast. Caving was fun. Afterwards we played baseball with an oversized corkscrew made out of wood.  We went to the river & caught some fish. The cave w as cold.  We went 17 ..... Carter is & was a ... feeb hitting .. hard in the back.

(followed a graph of 'fun' over 'time')

Drive.. Cave... Drive Back

All I remember is that it was cold. Don't remember which ... ace is

So mom couldn't go cause her hands would ... We did an adventure.  We had a ..... direction in the cave and had to get there in pitch pblack.  There was two crawl spaces. very fun. I got clay from 17 .... ... to the surface (to .........) & then lost it.

There are two Ds at camp. D B (me!) D T (mean)

Wednesday

Lost clay. Went lake = fun, best

too sunburnt too write more

(Names of various boat drivers)

1. Brother Young aka Nightmare

2. Workman

3. Guy I don't know

Diagrams of how the boats were driven with the tubes being dragged behind.
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Overall, he did have a good time.  He loved the caving and the boating.  I loved the graphs he included to show fun over time for each day.  While boating, he didn't put on any sunscreen and came home with a terribly painful sunburn. But he had fun.  I'm so glad that there are men who camp that will take him camping.  A few photos: