Young Life Ecuador Camp

Here are some pictures from Camp.  Pardon me if there are typos.  I have gotten 5 hours of sleep or less and worked very hard the last 4 days.  I am too tired to proofread.  We really had a great time.  I got to meet many new friends who love Jesus and have a heart for young people to know Him.  Abby made some friends, too, as she was with our friend in her cabin of girls.  She has been stretched in her knowledge of Spanish!  Actually we both have been stretched a lot in this area.  

This is the view leaving the camp.  The camp was just outside of Shell.  And this whole place is surrounded by mountains!  The building to the left is the main building where we met for club time and where the dining hall was.  The area of dirt/mud was where we played a lot of the games.  It has rained everyday since we arrived except today.  Cris says it rains more than 50 inches per year here!

Each meal the camp members had to sit 10 to a table in order to eat.  Here is Abby with her table one of the nights.  It was more complicated than it had to be to get food on the tables because the kids had to choose a table each meal! Keeping to a schedule is not really the priority here.

This Young Life camp is evangelistic.  Kids are not allowed to come a second time unless they bring 2 friends.  At first the games and songs are silly or just fun.  Later in the week, they start playing more worshipful songs.  Also the campers all get in lines with arms around each for every song that doesn't require jumping. :)

Games!!  They played lots and lots of games!  Here they are doing relay games.  In this one, each member of the teams had to kick the ball to the end and back while they were jumping in a sack.  

This is the end of the bike ride I was dreading!  I didn't end up having to bike it and I so thankful.  8 km up and (a little down) part of a mountain.  Abby was amazing though as she did the bike trip and then we all (almost all 134 of us- workers, leaders, and campers) went rafting afterwards.  It was my first time white water rafting. The river was a bit wild (at least to me!), but we all survived.  It was fun, but very cold and exhausting.  Abby and our friend's raft flipped and it was scary for a bit, but in the end all were safe.  

One night we did a "fair" for the kids.  There were games set up where the kids could earn "dollars" and then use them to buy snacks.  They could also use their money to purchase water, flour or eggs for the purpose of throwing them on their leader.  I am glad I was a worker and not a leader this night.  Here I am with some of my new friends in our costumes for the night.  All the workers were dressed in silly costumes, a bit like clowns.


The last night was my favorite.  It made all the hard, hard work and sleepless nights worth it.  The speaker, who has talked about Jesus already, clearly presents the gospel.  Then they kids are challenged to give themselves fully to Him, and there is a time of real worship music.  After this club time there is a 15 minute silence in the camp as the kids are ushered to chairs that have been distributed in an area of the camp and are encouraged to spend that time reflecting and praying.  It was powerful and many of the kids said they had decided to commit their lives to Jesus during that time.  Now... I am going to bed.  I am one sleepy girl.