A Day In The Life Of A Camp Director

June 27, 2010
Rotting flesh has a very distinct odor to it. It is not at all pleasant yet easily recognized. Those with a low tolerance to pungent smells would most likely have to fight gagging at this powerful odor. I have noticed that there is a difference in the smell of rotting flesh attached to a live host as compared to that of a dead host. And of the two, by far the most wretched is rotting flesh attached to a live host. At that I gag.
Why this introduction of rotting flesh? Because God has recently been helping me to more clearly understand this OSY ministry and the role it plays in His Great Commission. In one of our most recent camps a couple of campers arrived from the street; one incapacitated and in a wheel chair. His friends took care of him and got him around to all the activities. When I first met him, he set off my gag reflex and I had to fight to keep from reacting. I tried to inspect his body with my glances without staring in order to discover what smelled so badly about this man. As my casual glances finally worked down to his legs I saw the source of this putrefying stench that was overwhelming my nostrils and head. He had an open wound that covered his shin and wrapped around to his calf muscle. There was rotting flesh in this wound and the smell was coming from this leg.
My eyes have seen the teenage boy with gangrene burns from huffing paint thinner that exploded on him. My olfactory senses have been overwhelmed with human vomit on my shoes, human feces and urine stained clothes, and alcohol laden breath. My hands have held the infant with a soaked diaper and no change of diaper available. I have doctored the festering wound from a human bite inflicted during a street fight. I have placed myself between a cowering, frightened homosexual teen as 3 or 4 others beat him in the dark corner of the boys dorm. I have rolled drunks on their sides to keep them from choking on their own puke as their bodies convulsed with withdrawal. I have been threatened with a machete. I have had stones thrown at me. We have stopped the pyromaniac intent on burning down the dorm with everyone in it, and we have shown the light to teenagers who worship death, or believe that they are ghosts. We have been the strong arm that has stopped many a young person from taking their own life, just when they thought they had nothing to live for. I have put my arms around a scared, lost, desperately hungry prostitute who believed she was going to be abused by our staff, but felt it would be worth it to be able to sleep in a real bed instead of an abandoned car and to eat a warm meal.
In this ministry we have seen men, women, teens and children at the edge of destruction because of sin and God has placed us on what I consider to be one of the front lines of this spiritual warfare for the souls of mankind. In every battlefield there has to be a M.A.S.H.
unit. It is the basics, it is raw, it is urgent care. It is not pretty, it doesn’t take long and it does not include rehabilitation or rest and recreation. The strengthening and recovery takes place further away from the enemy lines. In a hospital or some other advanced facility.
That is much like the local church; that is where more time can be spent with those rescued from the front lines, but as for myself, my family and our staff - we are honored to be near the front lines offering this spiritual M.A.S.H. unit for those lives the enemy is seeking to destroy.
Because our Saviour came to seek and to save those which were lost.
We pray for and would welcome the next couple or family to come along side of us and help us develop the ministry beyond the M.A.S.H. unit. But until then, I humbly thank my Lord and Savior for putting us at the front of this spiritual warfare and for allowing this ministry to be a place of rescue for so many OSY.
To date in 2010 the Rawlings Foundation and others have helped to touched 9,819 campers through this ministry. 2,794 of them making a profession of faith. Those are lives rescued from the destroyer...
Sincerely yours,
Allen S. Owens