What a beautiful country! I released this when we drove from the airport in Sarajevo to our accommodation in Mostar.
Between the mountains right next to a river I had my very first summer camp. There are a few churches in this area and they have a summer camp this time each year. Actually it is a 3 week camp, but this year it is only one week. The camp dated from Monday 14 July to Saturday 19 July 2014.
This is how my journal goes...
Day 1:
Have you ever seen the movie Camp Rock? This camp kind of felt like that movie, not for the musical part of it but both of the two kitchen ladies has a daughter on camp. As a helping team (not for vacation purposes on the camp) we decided to divide into groups of two to be assistants in the kitchen duty department. Vanessa and I are on kitchen duty.
Luckily I am use to feeding a lot of people but I am not use to washing the dishes of 70 people. And that is what we as helpers did. It was difficult to communicate at the beginning but we figured out a way of communicating soon enough.
Every morning the children has a fitness stretching time just before breakfast. Then they would have some kind of morning program and games and after lunch we have to have a game/competition to play. After supper there is an evening program.
Day 2:
Miga and I spent the whole day building an obstacle course. We found out that we need to have one ready for the following day, so we definitely had to spark. I enjoyed the physical work a lot and luckily I could learn how to do some handy man things. Poor Miga became discouraged when our camp commander told us that she wanted something else in the place of what we built. How is that for a communication gap..? Luckily we still had time to create the obstacle that she had in mind.
The rest of the team went on with the normal program and leaded the competition games.
After the evening program we barbecued bananas with chocolate in. I never thought that it could be delicious but it was!
Day 3:
Today was a total tiring experience. I enjoyed running the obstacle course but wow all in all it was really tiring. Miga and Anseri had to serve in the kitchen so I took charge of the activities. Hopefully the children enjoyed it.
For the games after lunch Miga created water games that we played at the lake. Now that was a lot of fun!
During the night program Chanelle talked about our India experience and then we did a presentation that we created for India to explain what we did during our stay there. It was fun to reflect on India and to remember all the children's faces. I became sad when I saw the photos of the kids, just after our stay in India the government chased the children out to live on the street. Now we do not know where and how they are.
Day 4:
After breakfast we went to play games at the lake. Freezing water and a warm sun made the day memorable. We played in the water until lunch. Barbecued sausage for hotdogs and pudding was some smoores. Quinton built a giant Goliath for the purpose that the children try to shoot it with "ketties" that kept them busy for a while. Just after the evening message we had a game for the children where they should through their shoes to push a box over. We played that specific game in survivor during training at the beginning of this year.
The devil tried to come and steal from the joy of some of the people. A few, okay more like 10, children are very sick. they are vomiting and have diarrhea, it is just a bad sickness going on. Luckily there is a nurse on the camp so she could take care of the situation.
Day 5:
I cannot remember what we did on this day, but I know that we went to the lake and swam and then at night there was a fun program for the children with a talent competition as well. Anseri and Chanelle sang a song and Madelein and I danced on "Waka Waka" in the background for one of the girls. It was funny and really fun, kinda felt dumb afterwards but I do not care I had a super lot of fun that night. Arno joined the clown as a partner so he was all dressed up in funny clothes and we enjoyed him a lot.
Day 6:
Last day of summer camp. Most of the children left before lunch so we did not do much the morning, actually only a morning program where the children got photos of there competition teams. So then we started to clean up after the children.
We stayed for two days after the camp and during that time Chanelle got baptized. A wonderful experience that I am glad I am part of. For the rest of our stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina we are spending time with the children at NoviMost. It is an organisation found by Missionaries that wants to help the teenagers of BiH to realize they have a future after the war that took place 20 years ago. We are helping out at two stations in Mostar. one at the Muslim side and one at the Croatian side. So basically we just spend time with them and the missionaries working there.
