Camp KSBJ

The older I get, the faster the weeks fly by. I know it's true with everyone, but there has to be a way to get them to slow down. I remember when I was a kid, that the weeks would go by slow, and the weekends would go by even slower. Maybe it's because I'd be outside playing, or go out and about with my dad when I'd visit him on the weekends.

This week was one of those weeks where certain days blurred by they were so fast, and others were long. Our webstreaming for the station was down for a few days. It's a MAJOR part of the station, as there are upwards of 3,500 people listening at one point. How it works is like this...we have our work network, where the studio is. The audio is, of course, digital nowadays. We broadcast the format to our Windows Media Encoder server. From there, our Window Media Server that is in our colo (co-location) out at another facility where we rent a server cabinet, connects to that server back at the KSBJ campus and pulls the feed to itself, and then plays it on that server. Then, the listener goes to our website - http://www.ksbj.org/ - and clicks the audio player. The player then connects to the Windows Media Server at our colo and listens to the feed that is playing. It's all done this way, because with all the people that listen to us online, if we had the server in our network on campus it would eat all of our bandwidth. It's also because we use that and a couple other servers for disaster recovery. Meaning we store data there in case we have a disaster at work and lose servers. My week consisted of moving cabinets to our new one at the colo. We did that because we rent the cabinet, and another company that owns cabinets out there could give us a significant discount per month. Being a 100% donor supported station, we try to make sure that we are spending the money as wisely as we can. It's our duty to the listeners.

Then on Wednesday, the staff went on an overnight retreat at Pine Cove Christian Camp. I was on the committee in charge of getting everything set up for it. My main focus was on creating a shirt for the staff, as well as making some lanyards with our itinerary on the back, that way if any of the staff need to take a call or do something away from the group, then they would know where we were when they could come back. I had never been to a "camp" as a kid, so it was neat to go there and see what kids experience when they come. We didn't have a lot of time, so we were only able to sample what the camp had to offer. One of the few planned staff games we made everyone do was based off one of the counselors saying that it was one of their most popular things to do with everyone who comes to camp. Frisbee Golf. If you know me, you know that I can't throw a frisbee straight to save my life. It's true. I wasn't looking forward to this that much, other than to just hang out with the people. Frisbee Golf is played just like regular golf. You start out at a certain area, and have to get the frisbee into the "hole" with as few throws as you can. Easy enough, right? Well the first few throws assured myself that I still can't throw straight, and that I just need to have fun with my failure and try to figure out another way to play well. I then figured it out. It was like a lightbulb went off. I can throw long, and even though my frisbee won't go straight, I can play the hook that it does! So, from then on, I would launch it as hard as I could, and throw it a little to the right, because every single time, it would then hook mid-flight back to the left. I started doing really well. Nothing amazing, but a lot better than I had anticipated. And of course, once I started doing well, I was hooked! I had to play another round of the nine holes before we left the following day. After I got home then next day, I told B about the game, and how we could all go out and have fun doing it as a family, since I'm pretty sure all the frisbee golf courses are free at any parks that have them. Then, during our free time, a few of us did their zip-line. What that is, is a three story tower you have to climp up to, then you clip yourself to this wire, jump off the tower, then slide down this wire about 400 feet or so. It's crazy because the wire doesn't catch right away, so you drop a good 10 feet before it does and then you swing down the hillside the rest of the way. Somehow I developed a fear of heights a couple years ago, so I was shaking and short of breath before I even got to the top of the platform. And after the harness you have is connected to the strap/wire, it pulls hard, so you have to make sure you steady yourself and pull back. Thing was, that first time, like I said, I was shaking and seemed as if I had no muscle to keep myself in place, but I did. All my friends at the bottom who were cheering me on kept saying that I couldn't let the lady I was going with, to go before me, so they said I needed to just go as soon as she started to count down from 3 to 1. I barely got off when she said "Go!", but I did beat the woman off the plank! HA! I did it one more time after that, and it definitely was a lot easier, but still had the fear when I got on that plank. It's such a wierd feeling. Here's one of the pics, I was ready to FREAK! We had a few things we wanted to make sure we would do to help form more unity and bring us all together as a staff. First was one of the dinners, we had a campfire dinner (roasted hot dogs followed with S'mores afterwards), followed by a music set by Calvary Church worship leader Scott Harrison that brought the house to a closer presence with God, and then a sermon by speaker Terry Teykl. I had never heard of him before, but his sermon was amazing. His main point was that we need to make sure we are focusing on being a Praise station, and not a People station. Meaning, we need to make sure our content, songs, shows, are focused on Praising the Father, not to make more people listen to us. If we get a lot of people to listen to us, then GREAT, but our FOCUS should be to praise God. It all is, but we need to focus even more. It really gave us a lot to think about as a staff. Afterwards we had free time. Some people went and played board games, some went back to their cabins and talked, played cards, etc. I wanted to go back out to the campfire, build it back up, and sit and enjoy the fire with the gorgeous night. I now want a firepit at my next house! ;) On Thursday morning, our very own John Ritter gave an amazing sermon that I will post the audio on here when I get back to work next week. He is the associate pastor at his church, has a Master's of Divinity, and is someone I've wanted the staff to hear preach for a long while. The title of his sermon was "Are you living a ressurrected life?" I'll leave it at that for now, but holy cow, what a great sermon! After that, he and station president Tim McDermott blessed us with communion. The perfect ending to a perfect morning. From there, we had lunch, and then were given a tour of the camp and their future sites that will be finished later this summer, and then headed back home.

It was a really nice time. The only thing that could make it better would be if I could have brought Belinda. We both need time away from the kids desperately right now, and I had so much guilt running through me that I was getting some of that while she wasn't. We're currently in the process of planning something for our anniversary the weekend of June 7th. It can't come fast enough!

Oh and best thing about the camp, is that I found out that they give families who are in the ministry a significant discount to come out with their family, so maybe some other time I can take B and the kids out there and let them see how cool of a place it is.

Well, B has a lot planned for us today, so it's time to get off here and get to work. She cracks the whip pretty hard! ;)