CW Eppinette - The neatest guy that I ever did know.

More about CW. This guy was incredibly socially active. More so than me, if you can imagine that. He'd go up to someone that he'd never met before and proceed with these questions, almost always in the same order.

#1 "What's your name?"

#2 "What's your mom's name?"

#3 "What's your dad's name?"

#4 "Does your wheelchair elevate?"

#5 "Where do you live?"

#6 "If you don't mind my asking, what do you have wrong with you?"

#7 "Can you transfer alone?"

Sometimes he'd have more then this, and other times he wouldn't get that far. It was really humorous, cause I could predict the next question correctly about 90% of the time. And he started off his prayers the same way too. "Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for...(usually the sunshine)...

In case you were wondering, he could also talk. I didn't mention that before. His sentences were usually fairly coherent and well-spoken. If he was tired, though, he might do something like this. "George...um...um....um....(x3)." George was my nickname at camp. I got it last year when a bunch of people, including my 2 staffers, thought I looked like George McFly, from Back to the Future. I've never seen the movies, so I can't say whether I look like him or not. I'm also not promoting this video, because again, I've never seen them. Anyway, last year, everyone called me by George. I got really used to it. I even began to introduce myself as George. And for some reason, I respond to it better. Probably because over the years I've learned to block people out even when they call my name. Not a good thing, but possibly it has happened. :(

So this year, Term 9, I intro'd myself as George. One of my staffers started calling me Curious George, or just Curious. The nice thing about responding better to George is the fact that I was able to hear and act when CW called my name in the middle of the night. For those of you who know me really well, you know that waking me up can sometimes be an ordeal. I normally sleep really hard. For example, Term 8, we had a young kid about 6 years old that woke up in the middle of the night crying. And he cried for 2 hours straight. I never heard a thing, even though everyone else woke up and were moving around, and even though I was only 15 feet away. So the first night that I had CW, I asked the Lord to help me sleep lightly, or at least hear and wake up when CW called me. And He answered that prayer. I slept extremely light that week. Of course, I was a good deal more tired, but I was able to serve so much better. On average, CW woke me up about 3-4 times a night. Usually about 1.5 hours apart. Maybe that's why I slept lightly. I never had time to actually fall into a deep sleep. :) One night he woke me up 6 times.

You might ask, "how did you survive that week, and didn't CW start to annoy you?" My answer? I survived with God's grace, and yeah, CW did annoy me sometimes, but I miss him a ton. He was totally a fun-loving kid who helped me grow so much in being patient and being a servant. You know, the kids at Camp Barnabas are really the ones being patient with you, not the other way around. They've lived like this for 16 years or more, and are used to everything being down a certain way by people who are experienced at it. Then they come to camp and they get these totally unexperienced teenagers who attempt to do as good of a job as their parents, and who normally fail in their attempt. We talk about being out of our comfort zone, but how about the campers?

I've got some pics from term 8 that I'll post later on.