DISCOVERY CAMP

Burchfield Ministries opened Discovery Camp the previous year. It was a brand-new endeavor with a large warehouse for church services and, more importantly, attractions that were a Texas kid’s dream. From outdoor basketball courts to snack shacks to water slides to horse trails and a go-kart track, just looking at the brochure for Burchfield Ministries got me excited. 

The Youth Group at my church was registered for a week at Discovery Camp shortly after the end of my Sophomore year. I had been to several summer camps as a kid and had some of the best times of my young life at them, and I was expecting Discovery Camp to be more of the same. Plus, I could finally get away from Burdell and my mom and their constant fighting. They were discussing leaving Christian Life Ministries, which was proof to me they were the hypocrites I knew them to be all along. 

We arrived on a Saturday. I was assigned a bunk in a cabin with the rest of the guys in the Youth Group. We were soon given printed camp agendas, explaining the schedule of daily events.

Most days were filled with free-time and optional classes. Church services were held every morning after breakfast and every evening after dinner.

By Wednesday night I had already rededicated my life to The Lord, again. I may have been rebaptized in water at some point, too. 

On Friday night, I was sitting in the front row of the church building as Tommy Burchfield paced back and forth across the stage, preaching into the microphone.

Tommy was a big man. He was built like a Teddy Bear and had the face of one. He was always smiling, his whole countenance resonated warmth and compassion. Even as he was bellowing up on that stage with his signature lisp convicting us of our bad thoughts and behavior, convincing us that we were not worthy of salvation but Jesus was going to offer it to us freely anyways, judging us for not meeting the mark as a Christian, even as he was downright making us feel horrible about who we were as human beings from the moment we were conceived and born to right now, we loved Tommy for it and not only agreed with him, we knew he was right the whole time. And it wasn’t that he was necessarily right, it’s that Tommy was merely confirming something we already knew to begin with. We knew it, Tommy knew it, and certainly God knew it.

There I was in that front row on our last night at camp, cheeks wet with tears, vision blurry, hands raised, praying in tongues as the worship band started playing louder and Tommy was praying in tongues and there was no way I could go back to that so-called home, back to that chaos, back to the feelings of hatred I felt emanating from Burdell, back to the lies and the hypocrisy and abuse.

I had my eyes closed tight, juicing them of tears, lost in The Spirit as the worship team steadily played my emotional strings, everybody praying in tongues, crying, howling. I was beginning to feel some sort of transcendence wash over me when The inside of my cranium began to feel like a sound chamber echoing at 528Hz and I thought I heard a low familiar voice say, Go talk to Tommy.

I wasn’t leaving Discovery Camp the next day. I knew it. God didn’t want me to go through any more abuse. I had found rest and refuge here.

Problem was, I couldn’t afford to stay at Discovery Camp. The Parental Units could barely afford the cost for the week that I was there already. And this was it, camp was over, the busses would be picking us up tomorrow.

Go talk to Tommy.

I opened my eyes just as Tommy exited stage left. He was gone.

Go after him. 

I closed my eyes.

I didn’t want to disrupt the service. I stood there, eyes shut, and gave up. 

Worship went on for another hour. Services like this never had a time limit associated with them, they were all spontaneous and led by The Spirit. The band would play, there would be an altar call, people would get saved, born again and delivered, baptized by fire and start speaking in tongues, people would get slain in The Spirit and start falling down all over the place crying and writhing on the floor. The worship band wouldn’t stop playing until the most ranking staff leader around would finally release the congregation and everything would die down and we’d slowly exit the building and enter reality again, whatever we imagined that to be.

As the kids emptied out of the warehouse church, I hopped on stage and went out the same back door I saw Tommy go through. I thought I’d have to walk down that long chert road in the dark, down that winding private driveway of his to knock on the door of his large house and have the most ridiculous conversation in my life which was certain to result in a call to Security.

I stepped through the exit door backstage. There was a small parking lot in the back, illuminated by one light pole. The lot was empty except for one mini-van parked under that pole.

I walked over.

As I came within a few feet, I could hear the engine idling. The driver’s side window rolled down.

“That you, Mr. Burchfield?” I asked.

Tommy poked his big bear head out of the window.

“The Lord told me you were coming. I was wondering if you were going to finally obey Him and come on out,” he smiled. “Call me Tommy. I know why you’re here.”

I was dumbstruck. Somehow I got into telling Tommy that I didn’t want to go back home and that I was growing so much in The Lord at camp and I think I was called to be in the ministry and I could really be a big help around the property. Tommy just smiled and patiently waited for me to run out of breath.

“Can I stay?” I asked. “I think Jesus wants me here.”

Tommy nodded his head, “I believe that’s what The Lord wants.” He reached out his hand and I shook it. Then he rolled up his window and drove off into the dusty moonlight.

The next day when the busses came to pick up all the campers and take them back to their respective churches, I waved goodbye to my Youth Group as they waved back, crowded in the windows of a big yellow school bus as they bumped down that chalky chert road. The rest of the day was spent getting prepped for the new camp week, which would start in twenty-four hours.

Now that I was a onboard full-time, wearing the coveted green t-shirt that had STAFF in bold white letters printed on the back, I moved out of the guest cabins and into one of the worker’s barracks. I got a top bunk above a guy named Jon.

My first assignment was the waterslides. I spent my days at the top, making sure the campers lowered themselves on their fannies without slipping or otherwise hurting themselves before they slid away. It didn’t take long before I attracted the eye of several female campers. 

They’d hang at the top and distract me from my duties. To get them moving along and stop goggling over me, I’d send them on errands, typically to get me an Orange Crush and a bag of Funyuns. This quickly gained the eyre of some jealous busybody and I was quickly dispatched from my waterslide duties before the end of the first week, only to be assigned as one of the lifeguards at the pool. That didn’t last long, either.

My next job was working the go-kart track. By this time it was July, and summers in South Texas are brutal humid beasts that send everything including cockroaches to the shade from 11 AM to 8 at night. After two weeks of standing around that black asphalt track exposed to the open sun with no shade, with the heat coming off the track mixed with the exhaust and the smell of melting tar, I kept getting dizzy and dehydrated so I asked to be reassigned.

My final job was working with the horses. I loved it. Our days started at sunrise when we’d get the horses out of the pasture, saddle them, then ride them or walk them to the trailhead. We’d spend our entire days out there leading trail rides or just hanging around the corral. It was a peaceful way to spend my time. I loved the animals, loved working with kids and helping them with the horses, and my coworkers were hard working and kept to themselves. I focused on my duties and thoughts. 

At the end of the day, we’d ride or walk the horses back to their pasture. We’d let them graze a bit before we put them in their stables for the night. If we had a slow day on the trail, we’d ride the horses out in that pasture for a bit and give them some exercise. There’s nothing quite like riding a galloping horse.

One time Jon couldn’t get control of his mare as we approached the pasture and the spooked horse started dragging Jon along the barbed-wire fence. His jeans were getting snagged and shredded and he was hollering his larynx out. I came up behind him and kicked his pony on the left flank with my right boot and all at once his horse lurched, Jon bailed out of his saddle, and the horse bolted off into the woods. I gave chase and eventually brought her back to the pasture. Jon was OK.

Most of our days were long. By the time we got the horses put away for the night, we’d have to hurry to the Chow Hall to catch the last of the vittles before the Chuck Wagon crew started cleaning up. We’d throw down our grub then head over to our barracks, shower, then hit the bunks. Sometimes while waiting for a shower stall to open, we’d be so tired we’d fall asleep in our racks without taking one. Our barracks room stunk something awful.

Late one night, after all of us had been asleep for a while, I heard some scratching and whimpering coming from the bunk below me. 

“Jon, what are you doing, dude?”

“I’m itchy, man.”

“Oh,” I said. Because lately I had been very itchy, too.

A few hours later I was woken up by the same scratching and whimpering. I opened my eyes and the light in the bathroom was on. The bathroom was at the end of the barracks. There was a sink and a mirror there.

Jon was standing by the sink, pants and underwear dropped to his ankles, and he was bent over scratching his inner thighs and groin like a rabid wolf. I could hear him crying.

“Jon! Are you OK?”

He looked up at me with tears dribbling down his dirty cheeks, “Dude, this really hurts!” 

The next day Jon was in so much pain he couldn’t work. That night when I returned to the barracks, I was in the same spot he was. 

We had caught a severe case of crotch rot. I had a red itchy rash that went from just below my navel, down my inner thighs, all the way to the tops of my knees. 

The next day we had to take a staff truck and drive to the Walgreens in Columbus to purchase some Blue Star Ointment. I had to paste that stuff on 1/3rd of my body and Holy Smokes it felt like I was on fire.

Speaking of being on fire, you might say that’s what I was experiencing at the camp church services. Tommy was a straight wizard to the crowds I saw come and go. Night after night he got on stage and commanded not only their attention, but their entire reason for being, their purpose and very identity.

As a green-shirt wearing STAFF member, I was expected to attend all church services unless I was doing KP. I never did KP, so I was at every church service. But I was also expected to help at every service, and that certainly meant laying my hands on and praying for campers.

I was on stage with Tommy one night. I was up there with a few other green-shirted STAFF members who were praying for some campers standing in line, coming on stage one-by-one to receive prayer. I was crying and praying in tongues.

“Look at this,” Tommy said as he pulled me towards him in a side-hug. I opened my eyes while Tommy spread his right arm in the air in a big arc across the congregation, and there it was. 

There was a fog in the room. 

A mist. 

It was hanging just above their heads. 

I watched that foggy mist move and undulate over a group of campers and one or two, maybe six of them or an entire row would fall down or backwards, hands raised and shaking.

I rubbed my swollen eyes.

“It’s like the tail end of God’s Glory,” Tommy whispered to me. “It’s just a peek.”