Tuesday, July 03, 2012

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

No comments: