by Megan L. Ellenberger

It was a hot, muggy, windy Tuesday afternoon in July 2007— the second day that my friend Katie and I were at Woodcrest Retreat. We were at crafts, working on painting the wooden planes we had put together that supposedly would fly.

Todd, the person in charge of the overnight camp, was talking to some of the other counselors. I then heard something curious coming from Todd's walkie-talkie: "Aghh! It's Chipmunk! It's on fire!" Then Todd shot off through the woods.

I looked around the table. It didn't look like anyone else had noticed. So I kept wondering, Is Chipmunk, the shelter closest to ours, really on fire? I didn't know. But then it was time for nature. Just then I knew the answer: Yes. Fire trucks were coming fast. I counted: seven.

I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. After I prayed, the pit was smaller, but not totally gone, because I had no idea what exactly was happening. Todd came to tell the counselors that we would be eating down at Indian Rock Pavilion instead of our shelters.

At supper we found out that the Chipmunk shelter had burned to the ground. My feelings were in turmoil. I felt bad for those who lost their things; I felt scared; and I was thankful the fire hadn't spread to our shelter.

That evening we got to go in groups to see where the shelter had been. The Chipmunks were the last to see it. When we were almost at the shelter, someone in my group said, "I don't see it!"

Another replied, "That's because it's not there!"

She was right. All that was left were two benches, the fireplace, two half-melted
basins, and a black, smoky pile of burnt wood and rubble. The trees around it were black, but they still stood. We could still smell the smoky aroma in the air.

Just seeing it that way almost made me cry. You would've never guessed that there had been a shelter there in the morning, with clothes and sleeping bags inside. Almost everything that had been in the path of the fire was gone. Destroyed forever.

The next day the fire seemed like a dream. But when we walked past what had been the Chipmunk shelter, it was thoroughly real.

When people were looking for anything that had survived the fire, they found a page of the Bible from Job. It said, "After Job lost everything, God gave him twice as much." It was amazing, like a message from God!

Want to know what else was amazing? They got a new shelter built in one day! Also, that night for supper we had pizza! Someone—nobody knows who—heard about the fire and donated two boxes of pizza to each shelter. So after our loss God really did give us some blessings we didn’t expect.

Fire in the Camp

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Fire in the Camp

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