Friendship Camp 2011

Have you ever had those times where your heart is full of joy and you know you are in exactly where you belong? That was what this weekend felt like for me. More than once i found myself just smiling even when I was just walking from one place to another and saying to myself "I love my job!!" although it never really feels like a "job" to me.

I went to the beach for three days for the "Friendship Camp" with over 100 students from the English classes and I had such a great time. Each day was full of games, teaching and discussion groups. I was leading a group with my friend, Seyha, but he had to do most of the talking seeing as how I can only have very very basic conversation with them. Each group was named after a Bible character and we were "Team Isaac"...

Each afternoon we went to the beach to play games there, like obstacle courses having to jump over strings and shimmy under bamboo sticks before running into the water 50 yards or so into the water and back again...

This one they are not allowed to have their feet touch the ground past a certain line, but they have to get a piece of candy out of a bowl on a chair quite a ways away. The funny part of it is that the bowl is full of flour and they have to dig through with their mouths to get it out.

Sometimes I have concentrate to keep myself from falling (trust me, I have lots of stories of my not-so-graceful, quick trips to the ground), so I definitely could not have played this one. Not only are they racing from one point to another, they are doing it BLINDFOLDED!! I would barely make it walking let alone trying to run. But they went full-force, sometimes into each other.

In one of the races, right after they said "go", a guy that ran into the crowd on the side and took out at least three other people. And while us bystanders were laughing about that, another one of the racers came over to the other side where myself and a few others were standing and smacked straight into one of the spectators. He never saw it coming and no chance to brace himself. Don't worry, everyone was ok.

This was one of the move subdued games where, depending on the number called out, they had to do a certain action. For one of them, they had to bow and curtsy to each other...

There was a session set aside for a question and answer panel with the team from Australia.

And while the activities of the weekend were great, it doesn't hurt when this is the view either...

This is a shot of the whole group. I am off to the side in the semi-shade so you can't see me very well.

For many of the students, this was the first time that they had ever heard about God. And while having a lot of fun was certainly high on the priority list, the main objective of the weekend was to present truth to the students and provoke them to think and ask questions, creating a hunger to know more about God. Because these are students at the church, we will see all of them on a regular basis and are able to continue cultivating friendships with them and share more with them as time goes on.