Urban Camp Day 3,4 & 5.
We continue our routine of breakfast followed by devotions in Ephesians. Urban team meeting at 0930hrs before moving on to greet/welcome the kids. I strongly believe it is very crucial and important to welcome and send the kids off all the time, as they see we are invested in them and truly want to build relationships. The lessons forward were based on how David got a true friend in Jonathan and how Jonathan displayed loyalty towards David.
Lots of questions and interactions with the daily words of the day, each day from Day 1, the kids get to learn and use 10 new words, some of them were reliable, honest, faithful, respectful and caring. Ending with a crossword puzzle to find the words they learned. Onto our last skill for the day. Day 3 camp we finished with teaching on making arm slings, talking on simple dislocations/fractures, this was a big hit!
Day 4
We did similar teaching lessons, building on David’s character and how Saul was pursuing David, but Saul still had a hard heart. The older kids tend do better at the English lessons as they have studied more in school, so they would hear the text/story in English and translate it in Russian. Our last skill for day 4 was teaching on bites/stings, sign and symptoms of an allergic reaction. We wrapped by getting the kids to volunteer and test their skills with all that they had learned in the past 4 days. They came up in pairs, also they had to be a boy/girl partner combo, and they had to partner with someone they didn’t know, challenging but it worked out! You will see in the picture here who our patients were!
(some of our wonderful interpreters)
Day 5, last day of camp
Being a Sunday, there was still church service going on in the Urban center, so we had to combine the morning sessions with the kids instead of being in individual rooms, each group were divided by colour and tapes on the floor. We had so much fun, doing loads of games and group challenges, collecting points with a winning group at the end, we did similar sessions for the older kids in the afternoon when church service was over. The toughest part of the day was coming now, I think we all in the team felt it but did our best not to show many emotions in front of the kids. Before the kids left and said their goodbyes, the kids especially the younger ones, ran up to all of us, giving us big and giant hugs, saying thank you! Definitely the best part of my trip so far, getting emotional as I type this, the team and I miss the kids, seeing their faces, hearing their voices, how they gobbled down their food, we never thought how much the camp would have impacted them, but it was so positive, God did incredible things to make it so successful!! Urban and CR team made take home kits for the kids as well.
The urban team were just spectacular and fantastic! The camp also would not have been possible without the young youth leaders, who on their fall school break, chose to spend it with kids from morning to evening on their own time! As Bernie put it, being shepherds and loving the kids wholeheartedly! We thank God for great future leaders in His kingdom.
We ended the day in Serghei’s house for dinner, who was very generous and kind to host the team at his beautiful house with his wonderful family. Serghei has 2 daughters and a loving wife. We were also joined by 2 new guests working with Partners international, all the way from Toronto, Dave and Daniel, great guys. We had a delicious meal, laughed, cried happy tears and shared God stories together, truly a gift for Gods people to be together. You will see a picture here, where it is famously known as the ‘Russian smile’ picture we all took, with Lee Anne being a cute exception.
Please continue to pray for our partners, and the team, as some of us are having upper respiratory symptoms. We have a few days left and look forward to our team outreach to old Orhei. We are not able to put all pictures with kids faces due to protecting their privacy, the ones you get to see are with permission from our BOL team, as some of them are their kids in the camp.
Thank you and blessings!
Kelvin 😊
