Camp Day 6 from Paulette Sievert

Dear Friends and Family at Timberwood,

It is July 13, 2017. Day eleven on the “Poland Express”, where each day begins before yours in the United States and is filled to capacity at every turn. This is Paulette Sievert writing tonight.

I know that every day only holds twenty-four hours, yet when you are here, it feels like there must be at least seventy-two. It is like when the little boy who brought the fishes and loaves lunch to Jesus when a crowd needed to get fed, and he made it enough to feed the masses. Somehow, Jesus makes MORE out of what we give Him as a team. And when I say “team” you need to know that it includes the Polish team that works along side of us in every aspect of making this time for the twelve to twenty year old’s unique, memorable, inspirational and definitely filled with fun.

Here are some snapshots (We have a photography theme going for the English portion of our camp so this is fitting) of our Thursday.

            Morning devotions with our English speaking friends happens right afterstrong coffee, eggs,     

            sausage, sliced tomatoes, curdy cheese, bread and some

            added tasty condiments of Nutella and peanut butter. Today the focus was

            Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in   your heart that 

            God raised him from the dead, you will be saved:”

            Backpacks filled with what you will need for the entire day and evening.

            Walk to school, fill water bottles, greet students, put lessons together.

            English classes: Today we played Bingo with vocabulary from previous lessons. Words like 

            focus, zoom, composition and the like. The students

            can’t get enough of Bingo. They love it! One guy had never played.

            Part of the joy of teaching English, is that there is such fun in discovering

            your student’s personalities and in watching them act out things, write

            a perspective about a project, and become relaxed in sharing a photo they    have taken as a 

            group. Some of these photos are perfect examples of what

            the English camp is designed to do. I hope you get to see some of them

            later on.

            Then we have lunch brought in, play card games, sports games. Today was    Squat Ball. You 

            should see Noah fly across the court and back in his sporty  

            Bandana! There are all sorts of icebreakers (Abby made it to the finals in

            blowing a decent bubble for her team.) Plus, we always do the Camp Dance

            , Feelin It, by Toby Mac and we are all getting pretty good at making the         moves ROCK!

            A Scavenger Hunt around Skoczów that included giving video footage of

            bouquet that we had made away to someone and conducting an interview,

            were all just one aspect of this crazy day and we haven’t even gotten

            to the evening program where I get to run around and create more

            excitement about the scores each of teams are building.

            The best part of our day was yet to come. Here we get to be intentional

            in sharing God’s word with a personal testimony by Pati M. on how

            Jesus helped her to overcome drug use in her life. She is preparing to

            be a doctor and I saw her earlier that evening rebandaging one of the

            Polish team’s fingers he split open earlier this week when he was

            trying to repair a microphone.

            The worship music led by Kris, Kon and Emily all help us to hear God

            better and after Abby shared the gospel, the students were invited to

            go to different stations called the Labyrinth for personal reflection on what sin does to our     

            hearts and how the power of Christ’s sacrifice gives us forgiveness.

           

            The students responded in different ways- but we know that the gospel was preached and that  

            God will continue to use that in their lives. He is at work here!

            After a day at camp,  we had a meal back at the church and a review of the   day session, we 

            reflected as a team on how amazing God’s good news is forall of us.

Well, the bells on the church are ringing and the dog that usually barks at night must have fallen asleep. (The best roommate in the world who will make you laugh until your gut splits, Deb, is asleep.) I think Pete is waiting for the computer to send

Photos for tomorrow’s activities and so I need to say “Good Night.”

Thanks for all of your prayers.  We have needed every single one.