Jun 29, 2016

Day 1 & 2 of Teen Camp


The airport is such a happier place when you’re picking people up instead of leaving!! We completed our team by picking up 19 Virginians from the airport. After intercepting some jet-lagged and eager friends, we loaded up the bus and drove to camp. Peace out Riga, we're headed to camp! We spent the rest of the day getting ready for camp and testing out the waters, meaning we jumped in the lake as soon as we could since it was a “scorching” 85 degrees here. Silmaci is just as gorgeous as we remember with 12 cabins for us and the kids, a huge dining room for all of our meals, all of which involve some sort of potatoes, and an unbelievably beautiful lake with paddle boats and a trampoline for hours of entertainment.





After a full nights rest and the permission to sleep in, our American/British team of 23 prepared for our Latvian friends to arrive. We got crafts together, set up tents, organized our Camp Hope t-shirts, and cleaned and decorated our cabins. The Latvian team of about 25 finally arrived around 7 on Sunday night and we hugged and greeted them all like we hadn’t seen them in years. It’s always fun getting to see these crazy people. We all caught up, had a meeting all together on the roof of the main cabin, and watched a huge thunderstorm come in as we prayed for our campers safety and for their hearts to be opened as they head to camp.




The teens finally arrived on Monday at 2 after hours of anticipation. We had been doing some last minute preparations all morning and when someone jumped around the corner saying that the first bus had arrived, we all bolted for the driveway. This was it, it was happening, and we were nervous. It’s hard to describe the feeling you have as your jumping up and down and waving at an incoming bus full of the campers that you’ve spent weeks praying for. There were enthusiastic reunions and introductions all around. After a fairly organized distribution of name tags and t-shirts, every group had all their campers, every camper had a bed, and there was an energy in the air that only God could provide. The afternoon was filled with a camp meeting where we worshiped by singing and dancing with the band, and then we had a big game that got everyone out of their shell and had us all running crazy all over camp. We had to go around the campsite completing tasks to “earn a watergun fill” from the lake, and find targets covered in toilet paper to shoot to reveal a letter. In the end, you had to unscramble all the letters to make a word. Our teams both lost so we still have no clue what it said but we had a blast doing it all. We then had some allotted time to come up with a team name and skit to represent that name. This is one of my favorite things to do at the start of camp because I think it helps to give the campers a bonding common ground before they get started with the weeks activities.












My (Gable’s) team this week is a group of seven 14-15 year old girls, two of which have never been to Camp Hope before, and some who have been coming up to eight years! God is so good, he gave me a group of girls who loves cats J so we decided our team name would be Bumblecats… half bumble-bee, half cat - makes sense right? We are having so much fun playing games, singing Twenty-one Pilots, One Direction and Justin Bieber, and coloring in our coloring books – it’s only the second full day of camp and I can already see these girls starting to open up and get more comfortable with each other and with me and my other leaders!



Next door to Gable’s cabin are my (Olivia’s) sweet Ice Cream Hunters! Yes, that is our team name. I have been blessed to have six 14-15 year olds. Three of them have been coming for years which I love because some other group leaders can tell me all about them and we can see how much they have changed since the year before. I am absolutely loving getting to know this group of girls. They have fun and crazy personalities that I relate to perfectly. During free time yesterday we spent an hour braiding each others hair, painting nails, and talking about boys-the best bonding time. We have discussion time after each sermon and to be honest, it’s difficult to get them to focus but when they do they truly blow me away. Yesterday we talked about how we would feel if God called us on a mission and one of my girls said it would give her confidence to know that God believed in her to do something so special. I can’t wait to see what God does for these girls the rest of the week.



Yesterday was our first full day of camp. The staff met early in the morning to pray over our sleeping campers to have energy and happiness for the long day of playing gaga ball, swimming, making super fashionable leather bracelets at crafts, learning this years dance, and also learning the Camp Hope song in Spanish (this past January we had the very first Camp Hope Costa Rica!!) The kids love getting their minds off everything going on and getting to run around having fun with their friends, meeting new Latvian leaders, and jumping all over the crazy weird Americans. After dinner, we walked across to the other side of the lake for evening meeting, where Karlis preached about Moses and how God used him. Our girls are so sweet and are having so much fun making new friends, I just pray that they can open their minds this week in these meetings and discussions. In one of our discussions, we began talking about the stories that Karlis has been preaching from the Bible about Abraham and Moses, and some of our girls said that they don’t believe what is written because “anybody can write anything in a book.” It was a struggle to explain to them that yeah that can be true, but a huge part of being a Christian is exactly that. Anybody could write anything, but to believe the bible you have to be faithful and believe that the words of God are true. Prayers for our girls to open their hearts and that they feel encouraged to ask us these tough challenging questions, and that we as leaders are given the words through God to help teach them and share our experiences with them.


After dinner we had a night game where James made us get tied together as a team with zip-ties and run around the campsite searching for camp leaders to earn glow-sticks by answering questions correctly. So many bugs, so many kids running into each other getting tangled and having so much fun. But the game completely exhausted all of us, and after a MUCH needed shower, we headed to sleep to prepare for our second full day, which is every kid here’s favorite…ŪDENS DIENA! WATER DAY!!!!!!!!!! Yaaaaas.




So yeah, that’s about it and Valters says Hi!


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