It's unreal that camp is over. It feels like yesterday we were hugging our family goodbye and hopping on the plane over here. We had 2 straight weeks of fun-filled summer camp, and even though it kicked our butts and made us rethink our sanity, I would go back to day 1 in a heartbeat.
Kids camp was insane. Days were filled with chasing kids around campus, cleaning up spills and messes, dragging boys out of girls cabins, pounds and pounds of candy providing endless sugar rushes, and hard crashes (hopefully) at the end of every day.
A lot about kid's week is structurally the same as teen week. We still have rotations between crafts, swimming, and music/dance. We still have s'mores night and water day but everything that you thought you had down after teen's week becomes an entirely different ball game during kid's week. In a lot of ways it's a completely different experience. The kids are, obviously much more dependent on you than teens. This coupled with the fact that very few of our kids spoke enough English to communicate, means that everything is more hands-on. Leaders were rushing around to get all the kids blankets finished during craft, swimming is no longer a casual thing and requires you to be ready when a camper freaks out about the seaweed around her legs and jumps on you, and big meetings include a lot of time spent calming your kids down. It's a different ball game, definitely more tiring, but when you finish a child's blanket and they grip your neck with their small arms you find that you would tie 400 blankets.
Putting these little ones on a bus home was like saying goodbye to a member of your family even though you only met them 5 days ago. Or cutting off your arm. Both hurt. The attachment to the girls in our groups is so real it's unreal. We don't know all of the stories behind our kids leaving camp, and we don't know everything about their home lives. All we can do is pray that they leave with more smiles than tears and keep the reminder that we love them like God loves them. I love that we give them all a little gift bag on the last day full of Camp Hope goodies and 2 printed pictures of our group and of the entire camp staff and campers. We've all got a Camp Hope bracelet on our wrists to either remind us to pray for the kids and for Camp Hope, but even more to remind the kids everytime they look at it that they are loved by God and by us.
A story that Hannah, one of our new Viriginan friends, told really struck our hearts. The last night of kids camp we showed the Jesus movie that tells the story of Jesus, miracles, his death, and his resurrection. All week we had been telling and acting out these stories and this movie was to tie it all together for the kids. The movie began talking about Jesus' deciples, and how deciples were to travel and spread the word of Jesus, and one of Hannah's girls was sitting in her lap of course, looks at her, and with the little English she knows, she said "that's you!" That is us, it's what God has called us to do, and it's a really cool thing to see the work we do and love we give matter.
One of the really cool things that Camp Hope does and the Viriginan team/church does is the Adopt A Camper program. Families in Virgina have been "adopting" and sponsoring these kids to be able to go to camp for years. Without these families, the kids would not be able to come to camp for a week and learn about the Lord and have fun with crazy American people. When the kids find out that they were specifically chosen to be sponsored by an American family, they always have a look on their face like "why me?" They feel special, because they are special. These American families pray for their kid everyday, they have their photos on their kitchen fridge, and the coolest thing is they send over letters for their Latvian camper and the kids send one back. Without these sponsoring families, Camp Hope wouldn't be possible for our campers. So big shoutout to all of you, Camp Hope 2015 wouldn't have been what it is without you.
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