Pictures from Camp

Here are some pictures from camp. There are more on www.citybuilder.org

Walking home from camp

Tronoid, Ranzell, Snappy and Rico wait for their cars

I'm making Rudy Rootbeer

Drumming in the Rain

A Thankyou note from a camper

Courtney and Latrell under the parachute

Praise Dancing

Making Puzzles

Jump-rope

Lots of Kids

I got you!

Allendale Day Camp 2007

The two week whirlwind of camp is over, and I still can't stop praising God for how well it went. The best thing about camp this year was the number of campers! Last year we averaged about 20 kids a day the second week, with only a core group of 10 coming almost every day and on one afternoon we had 30 kids. This year we had a core group of 25 kids who came every day, and an average of 30 kids each day during the second week, with 36 coming on the last day. We've never had that many kids come every day and it made a huge difference. We were really able to build relationships with the kids, show them God's love, and have tons and tons of fun!

Here are some highlights from this year:
- making so many chalk pictures on the street that we had to keep going to the store to buy more chalk
- decorating leather bracelets with cool stamps lent to us by Bunny Simmones
- home-made gak, silly putty and play-doh, especially the gak made from glitter glue
- making magnets with our favorite scripture verses
- endless jump rope
- learning to throw frisbees, playing ultimate football, using the water balloon launcher
- making ice-cream, s'mores, and ants on a log
- plaster paris hand prints
- making and racing pinewood derby cars
- BUBBLES!
- The Shark and Birdy Song
- Praise Dancing: the older girls learned a dance to the song Something About the Name Jesus, they would practice for an hour every day and love every minute of it, and gave an excellent performance at the barbecue
- Drumline: the boys drumline, led by Jared Gonzalez and Mark Sklorenko, had several different parts to it this year, which included some of the boys marching around and Jared singing Lean on Me. Practicing drumline was one of the boys favorite activities, and it was very evident at the barbecue.
- All the older and younger girls singing and doing the actions to the Love the Lord your God song at the barbecue
- Rudy Rootbeer!
- Honoring our campers on the last day
- Receiving thankyou notes from some of our campers one morning
- an amazingly awesome staff!

Camp was not without its difficult moments. Having so many kids, particularly more older boys than ever before, meant we had new discipline problems and that our staff had to be always adapting and changing. We learned what it meant to be at the end of our rope and discovered that God is right there, giving us the energy we don't have and making our supplies go just a little farther.

Now that camp is over I am working to continue building the relationships that started at camp. I am trying to stay in contact with all the kids and keep having them over regularly, in the hope of creating some kind of after school program in the fall. Jesus says let the little children come to me for the Kingdom of God is theirs. Father, help us to bring your kingdom to the children of Allendale.

Camp has started!

Yesterday was our first day of Allendale day camp. On Tuesday I finally got to meet all of my camp staff, we had an extremely productive training day, and were ready for kids on Wednesday morning. One of the challenges of Allendale camp is you never know how many kids are coming and who is coming. Usually they aren't many kids the first few days, but as camp continues more kids keep trickling in. I had been talking to kids that I knew in the neighborhood about camp all summer but I really had no clue who was going to show up that first day. We had 18 kids come yesterday! That was more than twice as many as we had on the first day of camp last year. And most of our campers were between the ages of 9 and 12 which is just awesome. This morning we had 20 kids, and this afternoon we had 28. Last year the most we ever had was 30 and that was at the end of camp. Praise God! He is truly sending us kids and these kids want to be here. Thus far we have made and decorated hoola-hoops, built bug boxes, played with water balloons, made home-made magnets with scripture verses on them, made plaster paris handprints, and tons of chalk, jump rope, four square and tag games. Keep praying that God sends us kids and that we can really show them the Father's love.

A week in Indy

The week of the 4th was our week off in Allendale (i.e. we didn't have a team down), and Laura Brummer and I were blessed to be able to visit our fellow missionaries in Indianapolis (Indy). There are 12 People of Praise missionaries living in Indy this summer. This past school year they were preaching and talking to as many college students at IUPUI as they could (check out jesusatiupui.com) and this summer they have been preaching in a neighborhood called the South Side. Though the houses are not falling down as much as they are in Allendale, the neighborhood has many of the same problems. Basic poverty, drugs, crime, broken families, and lonely people who are afraid to step out of their houses. The missionaries spend about four hours each day in this neighborhood, knocking on doors, preaching, offering people a new way to live, baptizing them in the Holy Spirit, teaching them how to pray or how to ask forgiveness, healing people, and visiting the lonely. They get weird looks, polite no thankyous, hostile rejections and have to eat plenty of doorknobs to find the people who are hungry to the know the Lord, and want to join us in building Christian community in this broken neighborhood. It was a real gift to be able to join them in their work for a week. I got to preach to several people in Spanish and witness first hand that being a missionary is not about knowing the right thing to say, its about having no clue but opening your mouth anyway and trusting in God to act, and then seeing Him do it!!

It was also wonderful to be able to join the household in their everyday life. The Indy missionaries are living by faith, thus all the food that they eat and all the furniture in their house is what the Lord has provided. I never knew that rice and beans came in so many varieties. They also spend large parts of their day devoted to prayer, study of scripture and the lives of holy men and women, and missionary training. I'm learning that to be a missionary it's necessary to really know scripture, to be able to quote it chapter and verse in a language that everyone will understand.

Another definite highlight was getting to spend time with so many of my brothers and sisters. I got to spend time with Naomi Caneff, my former roommate and housemate at the University of Portland, and had the unexpected delight of seeing the 1:10 household at our joint 4th of July celebration half way between Indy and South Bend. It was a beautiful day and not lacking in joyous and competitive volleyball games.

Thankyou Father for all you are doing in Indianapolis, continue to build your kingdom there, in Allendale, and in all the places that you send us!