Week 37 - Planning

This week has been planning the camp with the kids.  Looking at the weather has been a thing too. It's the rainiest month of the year and camp will not be that fun if it rains the whole day. However, I wanted to do it this week since my friend who is lending me some tents and helping me out with activities is only able to do it this week since he works on the weekends doing rappel and adventure trips.

During this week I reserved the camping grounds, talked about costs, planed the meals together with the staff from the kids' home and figured out a couple of logistics.

At the women's meeting in San Bartolo, I helped put together the vegetables donation and then organize some clothes donation as well. I've come to the point to notice that we've had donations every week, which in a sense is great but I believe it can put people in a position were they only learn to receive. I was talking about this with the ministry leader, and since she's pregnant she will be absent during October and she said she wants to stop bringing the vegetables donation and see how many people continue to come.  I continue to talk to women and see how many are interested in learning business and I wrote some names and numbers down. I have at least three now but I want to put together a bigger group.

Finally on Saturday it was time to go camping! Rob, Zach, Eli and Melvin came to help out which came out great. Amanda and Wendy were with us during the morning as well as we took the oldest girls with us during the day and we had different activities, like competitions and walking around the park. the swings were really fun too.

During lunch time I shared a short reflection (considering children's attention span). We talked about how God created us as an image of him, like a photo in other words. We are a reflection of who he is even though we might not like how we look physically. We should see ourselves as images of God and treat the rest of the people like that too.

At night we put together a fire and had hot dogs and marshmallows. Then the rain came but we took that time to take shelter and have hot chocolate. There we had the second reflection of the day. We talked about identity and how that defines us. Sometimes we have live under a different identity from what God designed for us but if we decide to believe in God we become children of him. I asked if anyone wanted to become a child of God and Marcos*, the oldest boy decided to make this decision. It was a great moment.

It was then time to go to sleep, rain had stop a little but then close to midnight we had a flood pouring down of us, but it was part of the adventure. The kids had a good time and we had a person join God's family.

To see the rest of the pictures click below

Camping Pictures

*Name has been changed to honor the confidence they have had to meet with me personally