So we just finished our 1st two weeks of camp for the summer! I'm going to try not to write a book about each, and I'll let the pics (all 3,000 of them) show you what it was like if I ever get through them!
Our 1st week of camp was at Lunca Bradului with alfAOmega and Cer Deschis churches. First of all, the campground at Lunca is absolutely gorgeous and in this small valley up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. It just made me so happy to see the stars, walk barefoot in grass, take pictures of all the wildflowers, and that the only noise I fell asleep to every night was the sound of the river that ran through camp. We piled in Hillary and headed up Saturday morning, got there that evening, then had all day Sunday to rest, chill and get ready for the campers to come Monday at lunch time.
So my role at camp is the photographer (which believe it or not, I'm sort of getting tired of taking pictures), and then pretty much whatever else needs to get done. This includes gathering firewood and building/starting the fires for the city folks, setting up games and activities, cleaning and washing dishes, and rearranging the main room for chapel. But my favorite "job" at camp is encouraging the counselors. Every morning an hour before breakfast, we have a meeting with all the counselors, to pray with them and to hear about what God's doing and how we can be praying for them and the counselors. The 1st week, God laid Ana & Anna, who were co-counselors, on my heart. They are both good friends of mine, and I knew this was going to be a very important week for them because they had 3 unsaved girls in their group. So I claimed this cabin for the week, to write notes and encourage Ana & Anna, to specifically ask them throughout the day how they were and about their campers, and to pray like crazy. And I did. God's always working on me and my prayer life, and I feel like at different points He's teaching me how to pray in different ways. This time was mainly that these girls who had already heard the truth and were involved in church would come face to face with God and choose to follow Him wholeheartedly. God answered one of my prayers that I had been praying for a couple weeks, that I would get the opportunity to talk with one specific girl one-on-one. After a chapel that went on forever on Thursday night because we just didn't want to stop singing, I pulled her aside and asked if we could talk somewhere. We bundled up and sat on the balcony in my room and talked for almost 2 hours about God and our lives. She's such a deep thinker and has read half of the Bible just this summer, and she does have faith, but she's still holding back and hasn't completely trusted in God. She's so close, and I believe one day soon she will give her life to Christ, but right now she told me that she can't say she knows 100% that she would go to heaven. Please be praying for her, and the others that were at camp, who are open but still haven't taken the step to completely trust God and give their life to Him.
Here's what a "usual" program for camp looks like: counselor's meeting way too early, breakfast, group devotional time, big game, lunch, free time, challenge activities (zip line, high ropes course, climbing wall, paintball, & team building), dinner, singing, chapel, night game, then lights out at midnight. The food was amazing at Lunca, and I think I ate a loaf of bread a day because it was served at every meal. The devo times were super important times with just their cabin when they studied a small passage on the theme for the day and had to ask/answer questions about it. We had all kinds of fun activities, including a ton of water games, a hunt for the Americans hiding at night, bucket ball, a volleyball, basketball, & soccer tournament, and a skit night when it rained. The challenge activities are awesome and it was cool to see all of the campers push themselves and face some of their fears. Tom was the speaker at chapel and he did an awesome job portraying the gospel. My favorite night was when the power went out because of a storm, and in the dark and the rain God provided a perfect and powerful atmosphere for His gospel to be shared. A couple people got saved this week, and for sure everyone was challenged to take a deeper look at who God is and their personal relationship with Him.
So that's the "brief" recap of the 1st week of camp... now to camp in Ukraine!
Saturday morning we got back in Hillary and drove just over the border to Cernauti, Ukraine for our 2nd week of camp. We had camp at the same conference center/church that we went to in March for the youth conference and worked with Sandu and Pavel again. We didn't have the resources for activities we did at Lunca, but we used the one small field a lot, and somehow everyone mostly stayed clean even though about 30 girls shared the same one shower. Saturday night, a team from the States arrived to help with camp for the week. I loved working with and getting to know Sarah, Rebecca, Josiah, Aaron, Bob & Carla for the week! Sunday was a day of rest and shopping to prepare for the campers coming the next morning. The campers this week were mainly in the 14-16 age group and they came from villages all around Cernauti. This part of Ukraine used to be part of Romania, so thus most all of them still speak Romanian at home. I was really hoping that this week of camp would be great for my speaking to improve, but I really didn't have as many opportunities to just hang out with the campers this week, and also I could barely understand what they were saying! They had a super thick accent, which I think is equivalent to the New Yorker accent in English, and it was so hard even for the Romanians to know what they were saying half of the time. They loved this clapping game called "Peter, Peter, Paul, Paul" (except I can't even try to type how they pronounced it), and when I played they kept picking on me because I kept messing up because I couldn't understand when they were calling out my number! So this was the inside joke with me for the week and whenever a couple of them would see me they'd say "șase, șase, șapte, șapte" because those were my 2 numbers I kept screwing up.
The program was similar to the 1st week, but starting an hour earlier. We had a shorter chapel after breakfast too, along with the normal one in the evening. We had a lot more big team games between the 2 teams, Maximum and Aventura, like scalps with the panty hose on their heads, water games, an obstacle course, bucket ball, code breaker, underground church, and a photo scavenger hunt. With the younger age group, it was different feel and reminded me of going to Word of Life camp all those years in middle school and high school.
While I didn't have any "assigned" counselors this week, God laid on my heart a specific camper. It may have also helped that she has lived in the States for the past 11 years so it was a whole lot easier to talk to her, and that she has an awesome name that happens to be the same as mine, even with a "K." She is 16 and got saved near the beginning of the week! After that she kind of latched on to some of us Americans, and I got a lot of chances to just encourage her and help prepare her for how her life is going to change when she gets back to America at the end of the summer. It's always exciting to see God change a life, and she is one that I definitely want to keep in touch with! There were also a good couple of kids that got saved, and during the testimony time at the end, it was evident to see that God had revealed Himself to a lot of the kids that week. We're praying for a revival in the church in this area to come from these teens, because most all of the churches are super legalistic still and are pushing their teens away, not reaching out to them.
So camp has been amazing so far... there has been some spiritual warfare, but God's definitely God the upper hand in that battle & is changing lives! In 2 weeks we start another session of camp for 3 weeks in a row & I can't wait!
Kristie, Jenny, & I are leaving for London tomorrow... no big deal... it hasn't quite hit me yet! I still can't believe that a country girl like me will have hit up Paris, Rome, AND London by the time I get home. And speaking of home... I will be back in a month!! There wasn't enough room for me to go on the missions trip to Turkey with my church, so I will be coming home on my original flight on September 6th! Of course I have mixed feelings about this... I'm planning on skipping the last week of camp to have a week or so in the city to pack and say goodbye to everyone, but it will still be super hard and emotional for me. But, I'm also getting pretty anxious to get home and be with my family and friends again! So everyone at home... plan on having a party soon after I get back! :]
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