Sunday night didn't get off to a good start - one of the female leaders slipped and fell through her cabin window. slicing her wrist. I can still remember the blood and shock on her face when she came into the hall... after bandaging it up the camp nurse took her off to the hospital - she had surgery the next day cause she had cut the tendons in her wrist. She has a 3 month recovery ahead of her, and still may not get 100% mobility back in her hand.
But she came back up to camp on Wednesday and told her testimony of her time in hospital, and it was really powerful - so it was good to see her back.
The rest of the camp went pretty smooth - one of the guys in my cabin really took stock of where his life was going and got back fully into God's will... which was just awesome. I had a group of seven 14 year old boys.... rowdy little rascals!!! All they wanted to do was try and beat me up - once all 7 of them tried to take me out together.... that was a tough fight :-P considering i was running away with beautiful hot popcorn, which they wanted, wasn't a contributing factor at all :-P
But due to that and some of the other activities we did during the week, i've now got some pretty bad lower back pain - i'm trying to take care of it now i'm home - and probably should go and see a doctor.
Our field focuses this year all revolved around Robyn Pieper and her work in Gambia. Each day one of the boys would pretend to be Robyn and we would take our inspectors off on a wild journey in the Gambia. The first day we drove the inspectors around the Gambia in a Land Rover, pretending to drive wildly, because we all know Robyn is slightly crazy behind the wheel - especially with all those pot holes. We took them to the market to buy dried fish, and had to swerve to miss a donkey. We then showed them a baby delivery in Jarrol clinic. Ben King was our inspector that morning and he enjoyed the nurse stuff we think.
The next day we took the inspectors to the ice cream shop in Kombos... because again it's just the place to be is you're a WEC misso on prayer day. We served Ice Cream and told them about life in the Gambia. We then showed them traditional dancing and even dressed one of the guys up as a Kankarango.
Our last day of field focus we re-inacted the trip we took the WEC Trek team on to Kansambou. We couldn't figure out how to make an ox cart so we made the inspectors walk around the building... The boys pretended to be villages and came and danced around the inspectors and 'Robyn' as they came into our village. Our Robyn for the day then gave the villages chicken wire, and we told them all about how this was allowing you to get into the villages and show the Jesus video. Sam Swaddling was a dorm inspector that day so our village Alkaloo gave him a new name, and made him dance with all of us.
I taught them all a bit of Mandinka. We used "My tummy is full to the top" as a war cry (I believe in Mandinka it's 'A Conna Farta le Tep" not sure on the spelling though, but my boys were saying it perfectly!!!) and always greeted our dorm inspectors with Salaam malikum... and taught them to say Malikum Salaam. The days Sam was our inspector I made sure I tested him on the rest of his greeting :-P
Overall it was a fantastic camp. I loved the guys in my dorm, and the whole camp felt really friendly. Hopefully Camp B will be the same this week. (I am only going to be going up on Wednesday night of this camp).
