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Camp has been fantastic so far. Great bunch of kids, and despite some of them who didn’t want to sleep last night, they’re behaving quite well! The leadership team is brilliant as well.

This morning was a Tear game - we played the Basti Life simulation game. Essentially “families” compete to make as many paper bags as they can to sell to shopkeepers to earn money to pay rent and buy food. Now these Tear games are fantastic, and teach kids so much… but my goodness they take more preparation than any other activity of the week! The thing is that most of the prep can’t be done until just before the activity. But some racing around during breakfast and during the talk meant that it was ready in time… and thanks to a few other leaders. I just couldn’t believe how much had to get done - I kept thinking of more and more that I needed to do!

In between times though, I managed to get on bass and play some songs for the kids which was awesome… but what was even more fun was just jamming with the boys playing some background music while the kids played a 20 min filler game. I’ll have to try and find another spare 15 mins in the program somewhere to slot in a filler game so we can do more house-banding. ;)

After all the preperation though the game went really well… and I’m just feeling mentally exhausted now after making sure everything was done and trying to make sure the game ran as it should be. But after the game, we took the kids upstairs and I showed them some photos from Tear’s website of what life is like in Chairmanbari - a town in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I also told them a story of a woman in her 50s who’s life is just making paper bags to keep her family alive. The kids listened intently and it was amazing to watch their faces as I told them how this is normal everyday life for so many millions of people.

But here’s the kicker…

I gave all the leaders some discussion questions and the kids headed off to their cabins to talk about how they felt the game was, and discuss the story I’d just told. One of the leaders came back to me during lunch just then and told me of the discussions her cabin of girls had… they were so shocked by how many poor people were in the world, and asked whether they could help by giving their pocket money. She responded by telling them that they could, and they could do it using their parents’ computer when they get home if they like. But the girls quickly responded by saying, “you’ve got a computer here don’t you? Here, we’ve got like $50 from all the girls in our cabin and we want to give it to them now…”

And this coming from a group of eight 10-year-old girls.

It sent shivers down my spine. It just made me so excited to hear that some 10 year olds were so willing to give up their money that they’d brought to camp to buy things with… they’d rather see it go to help Tear do work in countries like Bangladesh. It was amazing!! I’m keen to get something done this week… but I just want to be wise in how I handle their money and don’t want parents being angry at us for “taking” the kids money and giving it to a Christian organisation. I will be praying about that this arvo and talking to some more experienced people here at camp I think.

Now the afternoon activities have begun. They have worked out so brilliantly that I now get myself a rest for a couple of hours, and I am very excited :) Thanks God! Now, if the heat could just disappear a little bit…

Thanks for your prayers. God is so actively at work here - it is amazing. He is amazing.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under God is good . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.