here we go!!

A team of 12 from Nashville, Tennessee got here July 3! The got here safely with NOT ONE PIECE OF LUGGAGE and didn’t get their luggage for FIVE days but were troopers about it!! They were and are AWESOME!! I quickly begin to feel like I had known some of them my whole life, Kirby, Jenn, and Paige!! I miss them already! So we did orientation with the team for 2 days and then loaded up a bus and went to camp, 16 students, the team of 12, 4 translators, 5 JV staff members, and the pastor and his wife. So total I think there were 39 of us!

So a typical day at camp looks like this:
8: Breakfast and we sing a song before every meal!
9-12:30: English class until with a 15 minute break in between and every other day the second half of class was a workshop of some sort… ex, cooking, knitting, photography, beading, etc… I had a class of 3 girls, Karmen, Maja, and Petra. Kirby was my helper and Polona was my translator! ☺
1: lunch
1:45-3:30: games where we were split into colors and teams (My team was blue and we won the overall games!!)
3:30-5:30: free time
5:30: a mixer game
6: dinner
7: evening program where we sang fun songs and then went through the story of God, starting with the fall of Lucifer all the way to the church today. So Johnny would tell the story and Andre would translate. (They did an INCREDIBLE job btw!) So we started with the Fall of Lucifer and demons, then creation, then the fall of man, Noah, Abraham, Moses, kings and prophets, birth, life, and death of Jesus, resurrection and church. Then talked about how we can join and be apart of this story. I CAN’T STRESS enough the power of the Spirit moving in these students and in ME. We saw kids the first day of camp say that they don’t like to talk about God to fully engaging to the story by the end of the week!! And ONLY by the power of the Holy Spirit!! And its because the story of God is ALIVE AND ACTIVE!! I think we so often forget the power of Scripture!
Then whenever we were done with discussing the story we would have a late night theme party! So we did like game night, 1950’s night, Asian night, bunko night (I was partners with Petra and we WON the whole thing but only because she was throwing bunkos like crazy!, movie night, coffee night, and Slovenia’s Got Talent! All were fun!

If I can have a moment of real honesty… By God’s grace alone did I survive that week of my life. We left on Sunday the 5th and came home late Saturday (the 11th) night and then had church Sunday (where 9 of the 16 students showed up!!!) and an follow up picnic with them (where 3 more came!!) When I was at camp, I was out of my comfort zone in every way. I was a teacher and leading a discussion group, living, eating, and breathing with 39 other people for 7 days, so basically just on 24/7, LITERALLY. And feeling this FALSE responsibility that I shouldn’t have felt, but I did. So when I finally got to take a breath later that afternoon when we got home, I lost it!! I cried and cried! I have never felt more exhausted in every way, spiritually, mentally, and physically! And it was the first time that I felt SO homesick. So I called my dad just crying from exhaustion and really missing family and friends! So I got a little time to rest that afternoon and evening and the Lord truly allowed those few hours to be enough to get me through the next week…

Also and most importantly, one of the students accepted Christ! There were lots of steps made!! Praise the Lord!! I am SOOOO excited to see what these next few months hold with the relationships that I have made!

Hopefully soon I will have some pictures up on facebook!