I first told you about Op Camp Como in April when we had the training retreat for the counselors. This past week we finally got to live the dream! This is the third year we took about 80 elementary kids from the Como neighborhood in Fort Worth, Texas to a week long faith-based camp at no charge to the campers’ families. It is always an incredibly powerful week and this year proved no different! God always assembles His very best among the camp staff and counselors. I am always so humbled to work shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest people on the planet! I quickly chose just a few of the thousands of photos I took last week to tell some of the story!

First, a funny story. (Well, kind of!) My husband Van directs this camp and was the director of the same camp out of Midland, Texas for seven years, but this was a first! During the traditional “keep-away” game in the pool, he caught the back of Mr. Wes’s head in his eye. He had a fairly innocent looking, but very deep split near his brow bone.

Thank goodness for Dr. Brown who was there to stitch him up! (The color has been removed from this photo to protect the squeamish - and yes, I videoed it too!!)

This is what that “innocent” looking injury looked like 2 days later! Carolyn Street, the business manager at the campgrounds took this shot!

Here’s Cody doing his Mr. Gravitt impression!

This is Tyler, who prefers to be referred to as the best intern ever, as they all do! He was definitely the best intern this year! He pretty much had a new hairstyle every day! It started out like this, turned into a mohawk, and eventually he was bald.

Here are Van and I with our boys, Josh and Joe Norman! They were campers back in the early 90s at the Midland Opportunity Camp and still come back every year to help us out. We’ve had the honor of watching them grow up and they are family to us. BTW, today is Josh’s 28th birthday! Happy Birthday, Baby! We are so proud of both of them! Josh played football and was a National Champion at OU and went on to play for the San Diego Chargers, New York Jets and Oakland Raiders. He is now CEO of The Truth Records and JLee Productions. Joe was the Texas Defensive Player of the Year his senior year at Midland Lee High School, played at Texas Tech, and was in the movies “Friday Night Lights”, “We are Marshall”, and “Invincible” as a football player. He is working in the oil business now. Just a little Mama-braggin!

Josh ran a little football mini-camp for the boys at recreation time one day! Pretty cool to have a former NFL player showing you how it’s done! Byron, the boy in the blue shirt, is a Hurricane Katrina survivor. His brother was a counselor for us this year and did an incredible job! We are so thankful God moved them to Fort Worth!

We also had His Son (a.k.a. Vince Carter, former OU center who graduated in 2004 and was drafted in 2005) perform. The kids loved him!

A couple of my favorite shots:

There are no smiles like Opportunity Camp smiles!

Probably the best shot of the week was this one taken by my friend Anda! You can tell we had quite a bit of hair cutting going on in the boys’ cabins!

And of course there is video!


Op Camp Como 08A from Gravitt Productions on Vimeo.


Op Camp Como B from Gravitt Productions on Vimeo.


Op Camp Como 08C from Gravitt Productions on Vimeo.


Op Camp Como 08D from Gravitt Productions on Vimeo.


Op Camp Como 08E from Gravitt Productions on Vimeo.

Tags: Opportunity Camp Como, NFL, Hurricane Katrina, His Son