Hooked: Thoughts from returning summer staffer, Emma Couch.

I’ve been participating in Mountain T.O.P.’s ministry in some capacity since the summer of 2009. Last year, I felt strongly that God was calling me to spend my summer doing His work as a summer staffer. As I was finishing up my sophomore year at Ohio State, and preparing for a summer spent in Tennessee, I had a lot of ideas about what my experience was going to be like. A summer spent in paradise, where I was the hero, changing people’s lives and making some awesome new friends. What I found was that I was completely wrong; once my summer was complete, I found that my life was instead the one that had been changed, by the people I encountered, and the unbelievable, all-encompassing love I experienced.

Those of you who have been on summer staff will understand me when I say that our job is HARD. While I had expected a happy-go-lucky, super relaxing job, half the time I was a Ministry Coordinator, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to fix this problem or solve that issue.  Sometimes I became frustrated, sometimes I wondered why on earth I would have chosen to spend my summer in a place whose closest Wal-Mart was 40 minutes away, and sometimes I thought that maybe I should just go home. But then came the quiet moments, whether it be during a staff worship during precamp, or a daybreak on a worksite, or quiet moment with a family at a project. In those moments, I realized that Mountain T.O.P. was an unbelievably important place, and that I was lucky enough to get to experience that crazy thing we call staff life, seeing God in everything I encountered.

This summer, I get the opportunity to return for my second year on staff, as a YSM Program Manager. I’ll be taking on a much different role than I did last summer, and I have a lot of nerves about my abilities, the experience itself, and what the summer is going to look like. I had my doubts about applying for my second year, as I’m getting ready to go into my senior year of college, but after a lot of prayer, and some gentle nudging from God, I realized that my heart wouldn’t be satisfied until I returned to the mountain to continue His work. I already know that my job will be hard, and sometimes I’ll be sad there’s no Wal-Mart, but if I learned anything from my staff experience last summer, I know that every moment of stress will be worth it, because there is absolutely nothing better than being able to live (and work) on a mountain top.