Camp Day 7- Megan Malecha!

Day seven of camp seemed to end before it even started.  As I sit here and think about what has happened so far this week, I don’t know where all the time went.  It’s hard for me to grasp that we have been in Skoczow for eight days already and only have two left.  I am so not ready to leave all of my new friends behind… Anyways back to today.  I have to say that today was another amazing day.  God has not, and will not, fail to provide for us on this trip.  He has been here every step of this journey, and He will continue to be with each and every one of us forever.

So what did our day look like?  As with every other day we’ve been here, we started off by eating breakfast as a team and then moving to a morning devotional led by Ollie.  He was reminding us that we can’t do this alone; that we need to rely on God to give us the strength we need to get through the day.   We then made our daily twenty-minute walk to the school where we started setting up our classrooms for English lessons.  Then it was time for our morning program where we danced to a Just Dance song, looked at a slideshow of pictures from the day before, and practiced the camp dance.  Then it was time for our first hour of English lessons.  Jim and I teach English together, and I am so thankful for that.  He is bold in his faith, and he is able to think on his feet.  Today we handed out our God First bracelets to our class.  They were so happy to receive one!  In between our two hours of lessons we had a break where we ate some cinnamon roles and talked with the campers.  Then it was time for lunch.  After lunch, we all gathered into one part of the school and headed out to the shopping mall in Skoczow.  We organized a flash mob where we were to dance to our camp song.  It was such a blast!  We then bought some “lody” (ice cream) from a shop nearby and ate it in the town square.  Then we headed back to the school for our workshop time.  Today’s workshops were: cartooning, origami, volleyball, and card making.  I participated in the cartooning workshop that was taught by Jim.  He did such a great job leading it despite having to talk over some of the campers.  After workshops we headed outside with our camp t-shirts on to take our camp photo!  We then played a game of tag.  It was a lot of fun even though it was difficult.  Then we headed inside for the evening program.  We started off with dancing to another Just Dance song, then moved to the camp dance, then to a game, and then to camp scores (GO BLUE TEAM!)  After all of this, Abby came up to give another one of her amazing messages.  Tonight she talked about how we need to be all in.  We can’t have one foot in the Upside Down kingdom, and one in the kingdom of this world.  It’s either all or nothing.  Ellie came up during Abby’s talk to tell us about how she is all in and how she knows she’s all in.  It was a very touching story to many of the campers as well as myself.  Then we moved into our last theme night: Chinese night.  It consisted of many games and dancing!  I have to say it was a lot of fun.

At the end of the night I was saying goodbye to one of the campers that I’ve really connected with this week despite the language barrier that is between us.  Her name is Aga and she is 14 years old.  She is very shy, but is one of the sweetest girls I have ever met.   Tonight she gave me a really big hug and told me that she had so much fun today.  She then looked into my eyes and said, “I really like you, Megan.”  It brought tears to my eyes and made my heart smile.  It is going to be so hard to say goodbye to her tomorrow…

That pretty much sums up day seven here in Skoczow.  Thank you so much for all of your thoughts and prayers.  I just ask that you keep praying for us as we go into our last day of camp tomorrow, and that you can pray that the light God has brought into the lives of these campers will still be there long after we are gone. 

One last thing before I go.  Just in case you want to know what Americans do in their spare time, ask Ollie.  It is one hairy situation… Goodnight and God bless.

-Megan