Best week ever!

Region 8 is just plain AWESOME!
Most regions have 5 people on their team.... We have 6.. Our most important member is Butch. Butch was made by Leah. He is a 6 ton, dark, handsome hunk of a van. He takes us places we have never been before, including Highlands, NC.
Our first adventure with Butch was our drive from VA to NC and we had some amazing team bonding moments between our team and Butch.
On Sunday we went hiking at Whiteside mountain where 3 of us repelled down a 150 ft mountain.. Hose 3 would be Luke, Scott and yes, our very own cheerleader, Paige!! We were so proud of her as she overcame a little bit of fear that day. Butch was proud too! On Monday we had a great bunch of kids show up for camp and we also had 2 frogs that wanted to play basketball... We named them Ted and Frank. On Wednesday we went to White Water Falls where we saw a guy being rescued who had fallen and broken his leg. Scott took off to hike down the trail to find the base of the falls and so Leah and Stacee went down after him... We thought he saw us, but nope he didn't and apparently we passed him.. Long story short, Leah and Stacee ended up hiking to the base which was about 1.5 miles one way... Talk about perseverance! Thursday there were 11 kiddos Jo made first time decisions to follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. What a rewarding time! That is the whole reason we do camp!!
Our team is so sad to be leaving Community Bible Church in Highlands, Butch is happy because he has had a heck of a time getting up all these hills... We are sad though because we had an amazing group of volunteers and staff.
Well, that's all we have for this week! It's been great and it is going to take a lot to top this week but, "it is what it is!!"

Love Region 8!!!

2nd Session Region 2: Why not?

It was clear an hour into our ride that Region 2 was not your average region. Two words have become a part of our vocabularies within the last 24 hours..."Why not?" To paint this picture a little more...

Why not go to Starbucks twice in a day, rearrange the furniture, & watch the Bachelorette as a team?

Why not get aggressively honked at by New Jersey drivers every time we try to go left?

Why not drink expired milk in the morning?

Why not talk about Titanic with an 11-year old?

Why not go in the off-limits office at the host home (still coming)?

Why not take the invitation to stay an extra week at the host home?

Why not go to bed at 8:00?

Why not eat the gluten-free option at the communion table?

Why not coach football with one ball and zero flags?

The most important "Why not?" that we've thought of though...Why not be first to write on the UW blog this session? And why not write the second day our team is together?

Our team is legit. We have Cory, Franky, Hannah, Kelli (coming soon), and Janae. Why not get in the same van with all of that?

No, but on the real....we are blessed to be on Region 2 and ready to do camp and fulfill some serious bucket list items this week in New Jersey!

Jesus Bucket List

• 75% of our campers this week are unchurched...we want to show them Jesus.
• This is the church's first VBS/any program for kids in 3 years. We want to be used to help this healing process.
• We have 75 volunteers! We want to build relationships with them and make sure they feel needed and wanted.
• We want to know all of our music motions because it's not funny.
• We have 6 more days as this team and want to live as much of life as we can together.
• We want to drink a lot of coffee....coffee and the word. Talk about spiritual.

Fun Bucket List:

• We will be going to New York City.
• Progressive fast food dinner...why not get your entre, fries, and drink from different places?
• Going to see and eat something from Cake Boss Bakery.
• Go in the off-limits host home office for 10 seconds.
• 7/11 experiences for poor deprived Hannah (first world problems).
• Go see Princeton and act like students for a day.

As you can see, we would not have time this week to blog for you...we'll be checking our bucket lists off, spending time with each other, winning kids for the Kingdom, drinking coffee, and daily finding more "Why not's?"

Why not,
Region 2

Sports Camp, Laughter, and Gangs, Oh My!

Lets start off by saying that we are the team that survived two of the worst travel days in UW history. Don’t believe us, just ask Sam. We are THE best region by far, sorry to burst your bubble Coach Andrew.

We started off camps in the lovely city of Yakima, Washington! The morning camp was an all soccer camp and the night camp was an outreach camp in the inner city. Coach Kelli did great at soccer, Coach Sadie made Caleb do everything, and Coach Cindy mastered her British accent while at the morning camp. At the night camp we heard what Coach Sadie insisted were gun shots and what Cindy insisted were fire crackers (she was just being optimistic) many times throughout the week. Caleb tried to take a joyride on a golf cart while at lunch at a golf course, Sadie and Caleb both successfully went joyriding on a moped (well it was at our host home), and that is just some of the fun. 

The night camp was rough the first day but ended up being the hardest to leave. A lot of the campers parents were deep in the gangs and if they weren’t the campers had a ton of influence to be in the gangs.  We were able to see a few kids from that camp ask Jesus into their hearts. They were so enthusiastic, joyful, and on fire for the Lord and it was just a reminder of how we should feel about having Jesus in our hearts. We got so attached to the kids there and it was such an incredible experience.

We then left there to have camps in northern California by having the most crazy day ever of training.

Wake up at 5am + Drive 3.5 hours in the opposite direction + Wait 2 hours + Fly 1 hour + Wait 4 hours + fly 2 hours too far + drive 2.5 more hours back = 15 hour travel day to go 708 miles.

We had morning camp in Cloverdale and our night camp was in Novato.

In Cloverdale Cindy had 4 team 45ers 2 of which were 3 years old, needless to say the kids hit the playground a lot. Sadie took claim of Kelli’s cheerleaders, and Caleb had the Pastor and all the parents convinced that Cindy grew up in London. 

For the night camp it was an outreach camp that was a ton of fun.  On the way Kelli reworded the song Mr. Roboto to say Domo Orrogato We’re going to Novato. It is now our them song… Just kidding. On Monday we had a whole 7 campers at camp. 4 of which were cheerleaders. We did end up growing and having about 30 by the end of the week. They had cheerleading and then we alternated with playing huge games of football and soccer. That attracted a lot of people. Caleb had to abandon his team on Wednesday to be in a friends wedding so it ended up being the three girls in charge.

Thursday started off great and we headed to Novato. Camp went great and one of the campers who had never been to church asked Jesus into his heart. Sadie and Cindy were going crazy and decided to dance around to you rock my world, which we normally didn’t do.  We then were meeting with the volunteers afterward to discuss how great things were when a gang fight broke out in the parking lot. Meanwhile our camper who had just asked Jesus into his heart and his cousin witnessed the entire thing, including seeing a gang member get stabbed. The cops came and the gangs dispersed, some of them even ran right by us.  Us u dubbers were the only ones who were truly calm through the whole thing.  The kids were terrified but asked us to pray with them and for the hurt member. It was really incredible for them to ask us to pray after what they had just witnessed.

The camps ended great and we couldn’t have had a better team. We only did about 50 u turns, laughed the entire trip, and had about 7 dozen cookies between the four of us.  It was a fantastic session and there are many memories from it!

There’s  so much more to Region 4!

Caleb, Kelli, Sadie, and Cindy

So...remember that one time we met a girl named Debby

Hello everyone! Region 11 checking in from Largo, Florida. We want to introduce you to a girl named Debby but we will get to that later. Let's rewind to our first week in South Carolina. We had a fantastic team with Levi, Amanda, Shari, Elise, and Scott. We got to visit the beautiful island of Hilton Head. We had 2 great camps with 40+ decisions for Christ! There were lots of funny moments with the team between all of us staying in one host home, driving over an hour to and from camps, Amanda coaching flag football, hitting up the beach, going gator looking, and getting to eat fresh crab that we had just caught! We even had sports camp on the beach when Shari befriended 2 boys and we got to play football with them. Sidenote...Scott is very good at deaf karaoke. Ask him about "Picture to Burn" and saying the word stooopid (said in gangster voice). We then headed to Florida for our second week. After dropping Shari off at the airport we made the 7 hour drive down to the Sunshine State. We had lots of time to bond with funny YouTube videos, a euchre tourney, random "get to know you" questions, and it all ended with an epic stop at good ol Wendy's. After the long car ride we were super slap happy and it didn't help that Wendy's gave us 8 frosties for 4 people. Let me repeat that... EIGHT FROSTIES!! And, Elise prompted us to try and look at the back of our eyelids. (Scott was not successful but you should give it a try!) This is where we would like to introduce you to our new friend Debby. You know how in Florida there is supposed to be sunshine like all the time.... Well we got blessed with the pleasure of trying to run sports camp during a massive tropical storm (aka Debby)!!!!! This resulted in Scottie slipping, falling, and almost sliding underneath the van while attempting to not get drenched from the rain on the way to our training meeting. Debby also gave us time to play camp-wide games during every third sports session. We had thirty-six first time decisions during this week! Needless to say, we have had an absolute blast these last two weeks, so many great memories, and we have loved every minute of it :) We reppin 'leven, 'leven, 'leven...SNAKE EYES!!!! With all our love, Region 11 (Levi, Amanda, Elise, Scott, and Shari)

Thank you Sam for making REGION 1 the BEST TEAM EVAAAA!

       Lets start this off by saying that since our first training meeting the Sunday after we left OKC people have been asking how long we have know each other and why we are already so close.  We started the great team bonding adventure in Milpitas and Cupertino, California.  Both of these camps have had UW teams come in for years.  Needless to say, both camps were super organized and loads of fun! We were so blessed by their passion for the community by the way the church sponsored many kids to come to camp.  They took great care of us and especially Jenna while she was sick all week! This week we are close to LA with 2 smaller camps.  Even though they are smaller, both camps have great kids.  One kid was even so excited to be in soccer with Andrew that he crapped his pants (literally)!  As far over the past 2 weeks there have been over 40 kids that asked Jesus into their heart for the first time!

    Now as for our AMAZING team.  David, whom we now just call Dave, begins every sentence with, "Because I love you guys, Im just going to be open and honest here..." and then we learn all kinds of new secretes about him.  Dave also spent hours talking about how long his nails were and then proceeded to clip his nails at the Rite Aid.  Andrew aka Da Boss, aka Coach Walla Walla (which he claims all the campers call him. Still never heard it) or aka The Paine Train.  All we have to say about him is... "Every kinda team needs a leader, a strong one who knows your game..."  He has been an amazing leader and takes care of all of us!  ChristTina... We have spent the entire week trying to teach Hannah how to say her name. Let me tell ya, ChrisTina is a full out otter. As our assistant coach, she has brought so much joy and excitement to this team while keeping Da Boss in line. Jenna might be the best cheerleader in the country. She coached through an ear infection, respiratory infection, and being almost completely deaf. We got a lot of blank stares as we tried to communicate with her which resulted in us using all the UW music motions. Hannah started week 2 off by setting a personal record of peeing for 54 seconds while singing "let the river flow."  Besides sitting in her cave (which is actually the back seat of the mini van) her favorite hobby is hanging out of the car window and screaming at the pedestrians.  But the highlight of Hannah's week was being proposed to by a 16 year old church volunteer.

Well to wrap it up (SORRY but not sorry about our novel. Can you tell we LOVEEEE each other?!)  Here are our favorite quotes from the week...
"Andrew gives me the nervous poops."(After teaching the Bible story) -Jenna
"Is it just me or does this not look just like Africa?" (while driving through So Cal.) -Hannah
"I pride myself in not turning around." (3 seconds before realizing he missed the exit.) -Andrew
"Andrew your arms are so hot right now!" (While swinging your partner around during Keep on Building) -Christina
"Why is there so much yellow grass here." (and too bad the rest of David's quotes were too personal for the blog.) -David
"Coaches, be like a fart and disperse!" (a camp director talking to the church volunteers.)

We pride ourselves on being REGION 1!!!
Andrew Paine, Christina Kent, Hannah McIntosh, David Brandt, Jenna Spady

PS. We convinced our camp director to let us all switch host homes to have one last team all-nighter this FRIDAY!!

Region six is in the mix.

Region 6 is coming at you Live from Beaver Creek, OH-IO. Second week of camps is well underway but before we get to that bag of tricks let's back track to week one. Are you from Tennessee? Because a Ten is all I see! That's how great our week was. Both churches deserve a ten. Now let me introduce the band. We've got L-Mac as our team lead, she's super handy in times of need. AC A.Ream is doing it big put on some HSM (High school Musical) and he'll do a jig. Carissa 'Giggles' Martin is cheerin' up a storm, if you poke her in the stomach she most certainly will squirm. Kenzie 'Moose' Marie has a pink cast on her hand, she's an expert at cat facts and that completes our band. We had a great time last week in Baxter and Cookeville doing camps with two great churches. From belly flops to pies in the face (Alex volunteered as tribute) bible time and long van ride we were able to see many kids come to know Christ. We then went through an unknown time zone to the only state with 'Hi' in the middle of it. (Ohio...)  Now we are finishing up a great week of camps and having another awesome Gospel day.  We can't believe that our two weeks together are already coming to a close!  We have seen God move in amazing ways and are looking forward to what He has in store next.

Region 6

L-Mac, AC A. Ream, Moose, and Giggles

It would be so cool if I was SpiderMan right now...

Hawaii 5-0: Maui Stats

     Aloha from the beautiful state of Hawaii.  Region 13, aka Region Hawaii 5-0, survived our first week of camps in Maui.  For me personally (Tiffany), it has been amazing to watch the Hawaii ministry grow and expand over the last few years, and this year was no different.  Records were made to be broken I guess.  Last year our largest camp in Hawaii was 198 kids strong.  This week, Hope Chapel Maui shattered that record.  Our morning camp had 250 kids!!!  Praise God!  It was an overwhelming amount of kids, but we had some amazing helpers step up to the plate.  Our best guess is that close to 40 of those campers made first time decisions.  Friday at camp was awesome as we acted out the Bible time for all the campers and an additional 100 parents.  We used pool noodles as our "battle weapons" of choice!  It was great fun!!  But the coolest part was at the end of camp we had the parents join their children to sing HAPPY DAY.  It was an amazingly powerful thing to see Moms, Dads, Grandmas, Grandpas, etc... jumping right in and celebrating an awesome week with their kids. Hope Chapel was rockin!
     Once again, the children (and families) of Hope Chapel blew us away with their response to Change 4 Change!  The campers brought in a total of $1012, with the girls SMASHING the boys in the head to head competition with nearly a $400 difference.  An adult at the church was so touched by what the kids raised, that they decided to match it dollar for dollar!  With that being said, $2024 was raised to allow children around the world hear the gospel.
     Our night camp was held up country in Kula.  We had 52 kids attend this camp.  For our team, it was a treat to have this smaller camp.  It was a lot more intimate, and we were able to get to know the kids well!  12 of them made first time decisions.  This camp wasn't without its challenges though...We were at a public park, and lets just say some people weren't happy we were there and keyed up the van real good.  But with such opposition, we know that we are doing a mighty work for God!

   Our team is doing well.  TJ and I were both sick last week, so that was a challenge, but we are all doing better.  Sarcasm reigns supreme on our team, and for some reason Lynda keeps forgetting everyone's name, including her own.  It makes life interesting.  Yesterday we hopped on a very tiny plane to Kona.  As Justin put it... everyone should be happy because, "Everyone gets an isle seat, a window seat, and a seat on the wing!"   We are loving what God has called us to do this summer.  We miss all our friends on all of the other teams, and are wishing you a great second week!  Mahalo and Aloha!
-Tiffany, Lionel, Justin, Lynda, and TJ

Week one: beaning and screaming

What is "beaning a ball"? We'll get to that later... Despite the rain scares the first couple days, camp ran incredibly smooth. The Lord faithfully held the rain away during camp hours. The wet ground made for some fun puddle jumping for football and soccer so franky and Luke had some smelly shoes. We were greeted with 135 smiling and energetic faces each morning, and saw twenty two kids come to know Jesus. Luke claims to have had the greatest campers of all time, and won't stop bragging. Emilys cheer girls executed to almost "perfection". Franky, "coach sparky", was beloved by all. Laura got her 4&5 year olds to participate in the greatest event of all time: bean the ball, complete with chants and everything. Check out video on Facebook, it's quality. Caitlin had fun despite a couple fist fights. She also made a bet with the campers and had to do fifty jumping jacks. All in all, we had a solid week in Forest Lake, Minnesota complete with the greatest host family of ALL time. Now for the fun stories... Caitlin tried cross fit for the first time. She lasted a whole 120 seconds. Which according to Franky, wasn't up to par. She also tried out volleyball at the lake and found out she wasn't as qualified as she thought she was. Emily looks like she has chicken poxs. Don't freak out, it's just mosquito bites. Seriously, check out coach Laura's video on Facebook. Laura's appetite for shoes was bigger than her wallet at the Nike Outlet. She also can't pack her bag to save her life. Luke got a nasty pie in the face, and can take a quality solo picture in the middle of the Mall of America. Franky successfully made fun of everyone all week. He also is a good van driver on drugs. Don't worry, they are prescription. Region 9: Laura, Franky, Emily, Luke, and Caitlin

Beyond The Gold is underway!

It was another great year of training in Okahoma City (Yukon) as UW kicked off its 2012 summer camps. Check out the highlight video from the week!

UW 2012 Training Highlight Video

The week kicked off on Friday with the "opening ceremonies". The big surprise was that the Torchbearers from UW's countdown video series all were in Oklahoma City and were able to share more with the 2012 summer staff! 

After a busy weekend of training, the summer staff started 6 camps all over the city. Our 2012 hosts were: Trinity Baptist, Covenant Community, Yukon Church, Crossroads, First Presbyterian Edmond and Faithworks. Over 1000 kids attended these camps and learned all about how to go "Beyond The Gold" in their lives.

On Monday, the summer staff found out where they would be heading after training and who was going to be on their teams. You can see where all the teams are by clicking the link below.

2012 1st Session U.S Teams

Stay tuned for updates on all of the teams!