Leaving Camp :(

The last night of camp was great!

I got to share my testimony and it went really well. We also worshipped, and even had a little birthday party at the campfire for one of the campers.

One of the highlights of the night was when Danjel (“Daniel” - one of the Serb leaders) asked if anyone wanted to do some karaoke. Crickets didn’t even sing. Right before Danjel was about to move onto the next event, Jovica (Yo-veet-sah) volunteered himself, Josh and I to do some beat boxing. We had been joking about it earlier in the day and joked about doing it at the evening worship, but now it was for real.

We got up in front of the crowd under the tent and each grabbed a microphone. We chose a theme: A train departing from a train station. It went beautifully. I did the chugging of the wheels, Josh nailed the horn, and Jovica did a wonderful job on the clacking of the tracks and the background noise. We started the train, accelerated it and turned it into a decent beat box. The kids loved it. After a minute or so of the beat we wrecked it and the campers cheered.

That was all we had really “prepared” but the kids yelled for more so we asked them to give us a theme. The only person with an idea yelled out, “An airplane falling into water!” So we tried. I did the quiet ambient noise inside the cabin and Jovica was a lady flight attendant. The kids erupted when Jovica started talking in his lady voice, even I couldn’t hold back laughing. It was a lot of fun. Eventually we crashed the plane and I did some water droplet sounds for the plane submerging under water.

My testimony was different from the way I usually tell it. I told them that I found a lot of pride growing up being liked by everyone and I would constantly compare myself to others to feel good about being a better person than them, but that I wasn’t and was still a sinner deserving of hell. I think went into focusing on the difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone. From there I gave the example of the prodigal son, feeling ashamed of his life and not wanting to go to his father because he knew he had let him down. I talked about how the father surprised the son in his reaction. He didn’t scold him or ignore him or send him away; he ran to him and embraced him and had a celebration.

I hope it spoke to the kids there and because I really felt like God was putting it on my heart to share, I know some good will come from it. I may never see it, but I can be comforted in knowing that it wasn’t in vain.

One of the campers’ birthday was today so we brought her a cake last night while we were sitting around the campfire. She was surprised and everyone sang the Serbian birthday song, which easily trumps the English one in my opinion; very catchy. After everyone ate cake, we hung out around the fire and took pictures and talked. It was a lot of fun.

This morning we picked up where we left off around the fire. We took pictures and exchanged names for Facebook and email addresses. It was really hard for us saying goodbye, which is kind of amazing considering just a couple days ago we were all feeling super discouraged and didn’t have a lot of friendships with the kids. We wish we had another week with them.

We’re back in Kraljevo now. We packed ourselves like sardines into Jovica’s little car and took off right after breakfast. We’re at his house now having some iced coffee and then we’ll head to the hotel to get the girls set up and then to the locale to get Josh and I settled. It’s kind of nice to be back in the city. We have friends here we are looking forward to connecting with and there are new ones to be made.

Today and most of tomorrow will be a resting time for us. With the late nights in the city and going straight to and through a week of camp, we’re pretty exhausted. It’ll be good to reset and revive before we launch into the last couple of weeks.

Please pray for rest, and for the kids leaving the camp today that they would get home safely. Most of them take buses home and some of the trips are several hours. Also pray please for them to remember what they learned at the camp and that the contacts we made there would continue over the coming weeks, months and years.

I should have camp pictures up before the end of the day : )

Ciao!