Wednesday, August 17, 2011

We all Home!

Thank you to all my fellow staff, American and Polish! You made this trip a wonderful experience! May God grant you all a safe and blessed life until we all meet again!

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Krakow, Poland 2011

Thank you to Peter and Luke for coming to Krakow and showing us around. We are all now home and thankful to God for the many blessings that He gave us!! Thank you to all our new friends, May God bless you all!!! Enjoy some of our pictures:)

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Good-bye campers

Lots of hugs and tears today. Now it is time to give thanks to God for all your wonderful love to us and to the campers.

Time to say Goodbye

This is one of the hardest days! I hate to say Goodbye, so it is until we meet again. If it is here on earth or up with our Glorious Lord we will see each other again. God's blessings on each one of the campers and staff here. You all hold a special place in my heart. I have a list of the campers and counselors, will pray for one of you every night!!!
Blessings, Lisa

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Tuesday's Walk in Poland 2011

Tuesday morning we woke up and prepared for a hike. The kids were all waiting with anticipation as we were getting on the bus to arrive to a ski lift to take us up the mountain. Once we were off the ski-lift,you could look back and see all of God's creation in front of view, Poland never looked so beautiful!
God is truly amazing, that's what I took out of it, for the most part of the trip! During the hike you were at the mercy of the unstable rocks it was scary! I enjoyed coming home because the polish children put up a traditional welcome home sign and ribbon that we had to cut to get back in, along with bread and salt.
After we got back we had a campfire and ate smores, they really enjoyed them!
It was truly an amazing day and you could see God in everything that happened, and that is truly why we are here to share in God's wonders, God is amazing and this whole trip has been a blessing, it is so crazy to think that we will be leaving soon, but even though we will be leaving we will truly never say good-bye!
-written by Em

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Monday, August 8, 2011

Monday Camp 2011

To start the day off, Mark was to lead us in devotion, but he forgot so he make shifted and talked about his anniversary and what marriage is all about. Continuing with the armor theme, chapel was about the helmet of salvation. The story to accompany this was of Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego. Today's lesson was on occupations and it seemed to be a slow day for the children. They were quite tiered. Lunch was an over medium/hard egg with green beans and mashed potatoes. It was quite random, yet sill good. I was kind of skeptical because I was not sure of the kind of egg I was eating. It seemed to large to be a normal chicken egg, but that’s what it tasted like. Following lunch was a celebration for the all the adults for Jolene’s birthday and Mark and Julies anniversary. It was a cream puff and Beth asked me, “Can I eat it and use my epi pen?” I told her might not be the best choice but it could be exciting. Our craft for today was to create a wallet out of duck tape. Some children had a hard time sharing the fun, colorful tape at first, but after getting it taken away for a while they straightened up. Drama was a review of the plays and the children were starting to become more familiar with them. It is great to see them really get into the acting with their facial expressions. Since it was kind of rainy out we had "sports" inside. It started out with Train Wreak, then human knot and finished with "Honey, if you love me..." Which is quite hard to say in polish. Music was combining all the different skills taught in the past days as a way to prepare for the performance later in the week to come. Dinner came quick and it was Pyzy which is kind of like a egg noodle dumpling with shredded beef in the middle. To conclude the campers day we played Family Feud with the classes and all the adults being of "their" separate teams. Tonight was also when we had to start our good-byes because Estera had to leave early. Closing devotion was lead by Jolene and it was titled, "View from the Mountain." No matter were we are in life, either the top or the valley of the mountain we can see where we are headed and where we are going with God as our leader. Some of us ended up playing Prawlo Jungli and had multiple fights over the totem. Ending in laughter we all headed to bed.
*~RMB~*_

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Sunday in Poland 2011

What a day! It started with a walk with six counselors for an hour. Then we all showered and got ready to worship our Savior! Pastor James was able to preach here in Poland with Peter, the Pastor's son translating. He preached about "I am the Bread of Life" and the feeding of the 5000. He also got the Nebraska Cornhuskers Football in the sermon with pizza. Awesome job by both Peter translating and Pastor James preaching the sermon. James even got served the bread during communion.

After church we took some pictures and started filling over 500 water balloons. We had a wonderful time with the campers and most of us were wet by the end of the morning. We even got to share some time with Jakob, the Pastor's grandson.

After some of the American counselors walked 4 miles to Wisla and visited the Polish festival and shopped. The rest of the camp did a scavenger hunt. It was fun watching the groups making birthday cards for Jolene, tracing our feet, shoot baskets, and singing silly songs.

The night ended with just a camper capture the flag that could not be stopped by the mighty doom of the thunderstorm.

A great day, To God be the glory!

Written by: Lisa

Sunday in Poland 2011

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Saturday's Camp 2011

Well, today was eventful in that Chris found the NON-stinging nettles again this year and had an immediate reaction. (He was retrieving a dodge ball. Vicki went wading in the EXTREMELY COLD mountain stream for the 3rd time this week to retrieve a dodgeball. I'm seeing a trend here!

We have seen so many relationships blossom this week with the campers and also incredible growth on our Team in support, care and love for one another, for our campers and for God.

The campers practiced tonight after Break-Out for singing in church tomorrow. They will be singing three songs (in English) for the congregation. Tomorrow will not be a teaching day. After church, the campers will have one activity session and the afternoon will be a scavenger hunt for all of the campers. There was talk of going to the Festival in town for the counselors, but we're not sure if that will happen or not.

Although the weather doesn't look promising, we hope that our mountain hike will be able to take place on Tuesday. It will be difficult to face the end-of-camp program which is quickly approaching.

Please pray for a safe ending to camp, for safe travel on our hike, trip to Auschwitz, and travel home next weekend.

Tonight's blog by Vicki

Friday, August 5, 2011

Friday's Camp 2011

It is hard to believe we left our homes one week ago today and we are half way through camp already. The theme for today's lesson was health; hand bells were introduced in music (which all the campers loved, even the older boys that try to show they are too cool to participate)and the craft was a "God's eye" weaving.
The words for today are flexibility and "it's a God thing". The morning started with sunshine so the plans were to do water balloons with the campers in the afternoon. At dinner time, the rain was coming down, so the plans were changed to do indoor activities. By the 13:30 activity time, God changed the weather again and the sun was shining, so sports were being relocated to the playground outside.
There happened to be a local in the park nearby playing with his grandson when he apparently collapsed, as his wife started to shout frantically. Obviously, Pastor James and Chris had no idea what she was screaming about, so they went to investigate and found her doing chest compressions. Chris took over for just two compressions and the gentleman started to arouse. Meanwhile a Polish counselor assisted the wife to call for the ambulance as some of the kids came running inside to get me to assist.
Be thankful for our response time as it took about 20 minutes for the ambulance to arrive while we monitored him. Had the camp not been going on, had the sports not been relocated the second time, one only wonders what would have happened to the gentleman who was later transported to the hospital. The paramedics were very efficient when they got here in evaluating the man from my perspective.
Our team has bonded so well that people just take over for one another in circumstances such as this to get the job done. The kids were reshuffled back inside for first period sports not knowing what would happen outside; the craft class was started without me; and the music and drama classes had no idea what was happening.
(As another aside, being the only nurse here, I am called upon to assist with other first aid issues. It is rather scary to be given a bag of bandages and other first aid items and be asked to treat an abrasion for instance. I have no clue what is in the spray bottles except that the name looks like it should be an antiseptic and the counselors said to clean the scraped knee with that. The 3x3's (in inches) that I am use to are now 5x5's (in cm)! At least there is some backup medical assistance if I am uncomfortable doing something.)
Dinner this noon was a traditional Friday meal of fried fish, mashed potatoes and coleslaw; the meal was very tasty. The campers are still having fun trying to teach me new words in Polish at the table. Supper was pasta with white cheese, bread and butter. Fortunately I took my jar of peanut butter with me. I became a new best friend to several campers at the table when they saw the jar. They raised their eyebrows when I put jelly on my bread with the PB, but then they have some food quirks as well that I might be skeptical about.
Evening plans had to be shuffled as well; we started to do an "Olympic" contest outside when a dark rain cloud came over the mountains and spoiled that. We were all sent inside and after a short period of songs, the contests for the seven classes were revamped to be done inside. The question remains which class won the Olympics.
Needless to say, we were all hungry by 9:30, so pizza was ordered from the nearby pizza place and was shared between the American and Polish staff. We had Hawaiian, meat lovers, vegetarian, and Mexican taco. The vegetarian was interesting as it had tomato, white asparagus, mushrooms, onion and CORN! There was not a crumb left in the boxes! Now the staff members are competing in the Jungle Speed game. I just hope they have all done their planning for tomorrow so they can get to bed early and get good night sleep. That's where I am headed right now. Good night!
Written by Jolene

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Thursday's Camp Recreation

Today we learned about God's Breast Plate. "So Stand with justice as your breast plate." Ephsians 6:14b.

We talked about recreation and sports in our classes. We had lots of fun playing with the kids fly swatter hockey, basketball, soccer, and many more sports.

The afternoon brought Basketball, faith bracelets, songs and dancing. The kids really liked the YMCA and the chicken dance.

For evening recreation, we played jail dodge ball. It was a lot of fun. The counselors even played all the kids.

We ended the night with our story on our missionary we are learning about Mary Sletter.

Happy Birthday Przemysław! Sto lat!!!

Written by Lisa

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

2nd Day of Camp

The second day of camp started out with the sun shining. God is good and answered are prayers. We have been praying for sunshine and no rain so the campers could go out side and do the activities and not be in side and drive everyone crazy. Today's English lesson was all about food. Some of the American Counselors brought popular candy and snack food from the USA. We had our campers try the food some of them they liked and some of them they made faces while eating, or did not eat. The food most of the campers did not like was the beef jerky and the good and plenty's. Hot tamales got a face from several of the campers as well, because it was hot. The day ended with a great big game of capture the flag. It was a very intense game with both campers and counselors getting into it. We had a couple of scrapes and bruises but thankful no one got really hurt. It is neat to see relationships form between the campers and the counselors. They are getting more comfortable with us. You can really see God's hand in what is happening already at camp.

Written by: Beth Dittmer

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

1st Day of Camp

Our first day of classes! We started the morning with a great devotion by James. Then went to chapel with a lesson on Job and learned about all the trials that he went through in his life. Our Bible verse today was: "Put on all the armor that God gives, so we can defend ourselves against the devil's tricks." Ephesians 6:11
Then came the teachers turn to teach the vocabulary about family. We remembered all our loved ones at home and said a prayer for all your health and safety. In
the afternoon, the workshops came with crafts, dances, music, and sports. We made memory books, did line dances, kickball, and sang some Christian songs in English.
I have to say we have a great team that has bonded so fast and we stick together and pray together! In our closing devotion we prayed for Rebecca's Father and her family. We know that God has a special plan for all of us, and He has his loving arms rapped around each of us.

Written by: Lisa

Monday, August 1, 2011

The Children Come

Today was exciting because today was the day that the children came. They all seemed to be very excited and happy to be here. After the kids were registered and settled in their rooms, we tested the kids English skills through a series of tests and most of them knew very little. A few even broke into tears from frustration. After a little coaxing they were happy campers again. Anyways, its been a long day for us and the kids and now its time for some much needed sleep.

-Faye Christoff

Monday Morning Walk

"You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." Revelation 4:11