Opportunities

Last week and this current week have already been full of opportunities to share God's love and His story.

Last week, during cabin devotions all of the counselors shared their testimonies with the campers on separate nights. One of the nights (actually, my last night in the cabin due to my illness) I was spontaneously asked to share my testimony. That was an experience! It was just a random night and I had no idea it was coming. All I know is I heard the head counselor say my name, then saw several hands raised around the room. I looked at the translator who had graciously come in so I could hear everyone's story and understand what was happening...she looked at me and smiled, then proceeded to tell me that a vote had just been taken on whether or not the girls wanted to hear my story.

I was overwhelmed! The girls wanted to hear my story! Then a terrible realization hit me: I had no voice. See, I had a terrible, deep chest cough last week and had ruined my voice that day. I panicked for a second trying to figure out what to do, then realized the only thing I could do was pray. So I did, "Lord, if You want me to share my story then I need my voice. Can I have it back for just this time?" I coughed a few times and tried to speak...nothing. So said another quick prayer and tried again...nothing. I smiled at the group as a way of apologizing then started coughing again and suddenly I could speak. Such a miracle!!

After sharing my story I randomly asked if the girls had any questions...almost every hand in the room went up. I laughed because asking for questions was just a random thought, but one that, as a friend would was was "straight from the Lord". After answering dozens of questions about my life story it was well past curfew, 2 hours past in fact, but the time was so worth it. When we got ready for bed, my voice was once again gone. God simply allowed me to speak for that short time and I'm so thankful.

This is a new week, with new campers and already I've had the opportunity to share piece of my story. I always wear a toe ring that says "love never fails". It's been on my toe for five years now and many conversations about love have sparked from people noticing it. Today was no different. I was sitting outside, reading my Bible when two girls from my cabin came up and sat next to me. Almost immediately, one of them looked at my toe, read it then asked, "why do you wear that?" We got into a great conversation about God's unconditional love which was difficult for her to understand because her parent's are divorced, so in her mind, love fails often. She'd never imagined what unconditional love was, it was such a blessing to be able to have that conversation!

English classes

These are the girls in my English class. They're so precious!!

We've been having fun in English class. It's so encouraging to watch their confidence grow as they speak during class.

Today we practiced ordering food from a menu and then paying for it. It was so funny to watch the girls look over a menu and try to sort through the vocabulary they knew about food, then piece it together with what they saw on the menu. For being 13, they're all brilliant!!



One day this week we worked on parts of the body to make sure they understood...they had fun with the sticky notes! The boys (obviously) didn't get into it as much as the girls did.

A normal day at camp looks like this:
7:00- Aerobics or Polar Bear Swim
8:00- Breakfast
9:15- English Class #1
11:00- Teacher Meeting
12:30- Lunch
1:00- Teacher Prep Time
2:30- Free Time
4:30- English Class #2
6:00- Supper
7:45- Evangelism Meeting
9:00- Game
10:00- Devotions
11:00- Lights Out
12:30- Everyone finally asleep!

That a quick update for now. More stories to come!!

It's Different

After being in Hungary for a few days the differences between the American culture and Hungarian culture really start to stand out:

1. After showering today one of the girls asked me if I washed my hair EVERY DAY?! That was weird to them and I had to listen to her explain (in Hungarian so I could only understand her hand motions) why it was so bad.
2. When counting, Hungarians start with their thumbs, not their pointer finger. So if you say "1" and hold up your pointer finger, they think you're saying "2".
3. Cell phones are allowed at camp. I've NEVER been to a camp in the States that allows campers to use their cell phones, but here you see campers walking around talking on the phones or listening to their music all the time. They even have to ask the students to silence their phones during the group meeting times.
4. Not only is washing your hair everyday odd, showering in the morning (like I do) is also a foreign concept to them. They only shower at night.
   
5. You ALWAYS wash the dirt of your shoes. Every bathroom has a brush that looks like a big toothbrush and all the students clean their shoes, well, at least their sandals, every night.
6. Chap stick/lipstick/etc., according to the Hungarians is also bad for you. I got bombarded by girls in my cabin trying to explain (again in Hungarian) how bad it was for my lips as I put on my chap stick before leaving the room.
7. The food...dinner is the lightest meal of the day. Tonight we had sliced white bread, a slice of cheese, sliced meat (ham and salami), a mix of vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers) butter and jam. It was all good, but in my mind that's what I eat for lunch. Lunch was noodles with some stroganoff sauce, vegetable soup and white bread, it's their largest meal.
   

Those were a few of the things I've noticed thus far. More to come later...

Trip over, Coca Cola and First Aid

We're in Hungary!! After leaving Dallas at 4:20pm we flew to Frankfurt, Germany. After going through security twice, we arrived at our gate we all sat down exhausted from the overnight flight. I went in search of drinking fountains to fill up our water bottles, Janet found three seats and took a nap, my mom grabbed a book and Rick decided to check his email. I discovered there were no drinking fountains in our section of the airport and went back to re-join with the group. After not sleeping at all on the plane, I took a nap and amazingly fell asleep; so asleep that when my mom woke me up to tell me she had coffee for us to share I told her that I was sleeping and didn't want any (that story was relayed to me on our next flight, I had no memory of it :-)).

It was getting close to our boarding time and the gate wasn't full at all, so wanting to double check, we went to the desk to make sure we were in the right spot only to discover we were in the wrong section of the airport. We quickly made our way across the airport to arrive just in time to board our flight behind a team of grade school soccer players who were good enough to travel internationally to play. It was a fun flight with all those kids on it, everything to them was an adventure to them. Every time we hit turbulence (which happened ALOT) you would hear them gasp, and conversation would break out anytime the clouds cleared enough for the kids to see the ground. When we finally landed in Budapest the kids all cheered (I'm not sure if they were trying to thank the captain and flight crew or just excited to be on the ground again).

We made our way through Budapest and I thought I was back in Kenya. Our driver was trying to beat the incoming storm and was dodging cars and mopeds left and right while laying on the horn. I was so sure he was going to hit someone that I had to close my eyes.

After arriving and lugging my mom's suitcases up to her room, I went to go find where I was staying only to realize the storm was here. I grabbed my suitcase and walked outside only to hear this ruckus coming from "the castle" (pictured above and below) and turned in time to duck as this gigantic piece of plastic came barreling towards me. Part of the building is under construction and the wind was so strong it had been ripped off. After catching my breath one of the staff members came running towards me yelling "get in the car! get in the car!" I turned to head towards the car and ran while dodging huge pieces of bark and branches that were falling on my head, trying to knock me out :-). Once safely in the vehicle, we drove to the opposite end of camp and I finally made it safely inside a building!

As I walked into the dorm room I was greeted by 5 counselors who were enjoying their day off. They greeted me in Hungarian to which I replied "Hello, I'm Lauren".
"American?" they asked
"Igen" (one of a handful of Hungarian words I know). As soon as Hungarian came out of my mouth they got all exicted and started talking to me. I crushed their hopes when I explained I only knew English.
We all just looked at each other, then one of the girls pointed to my shirt and said, "Coca Cola in America?"
"Yes" I replied
"In Hungary" there, we had found a common thread between us and that's all it took. At that moment I was very thankful Coca-Cola is universal and knew we could overcome the language barrier.

I spend the rest of the afternoon laughing with the girls as we all tried to communicate with our limited knowledge of each other's languages mostly understanding through body language and motions we would come up with. Then it was time for supper. I sat witht the girls who introduced me to one of their English speaking friends and we were able to confirm or correct what we all knew about each other. After a meal of grilled chicken and sausage, some vegetable mix with lot of maynaisse and white bread we made our way back to the dorm where one of the girls pulled "Uno" out of her bag. I spent the next hour learning how to play Uno by their rules (I lost every game except the last one), and learned the Hungarian for red, green, blue and yellow :-). Then I taught them how to play "Go Fish" and we worked on their English numbers.

Once the girls headed off to their counselors meeting I started making my bed and organizing my stuff when another girl came limping into the dorm. Thankfully she spoke some English so I was able to ask her what was wrong. She had been walking around barefoot and had several splinters in her toe. I went to get my tweezers and offered my assistance. She accepted and as I was pulling splinters out she asked if I was a doctor. I laughed, and said "no" then giggled again. She asked me why I was laughing. I thought about it and said, "I never thought about having to use my first aid here so I think it's funny that God likes to remind me that I can use it anywhere." She seemed to understand. I had her bandaged up and out the door in 20 minutes where I finished unpacking and finally fell into bed at 9pm and slept solidily through the night, didn't even hear the girls come back into the room.

The kids come today!! Whoo Hoo!!

There's Wi-Fi in "the castle" (which I didn't know about) so I should be able to blog/email fairly regularly.

to live is ___ and to die is ___

Have you ever had those moments when you question why you're doing something, or how you got involved? That happened to me tonight.

Tonight was the last night of Celebration with our refugee kids and it was a rough night. The entire evening I was talking to kids about their attitudes, mostly their ungratefulness. No matter what we do, or what snack we have, or how many volunteers there are the kids ALWAYS complain. Tonight it was the worst. We had planned a special night for the kids. After playing games and talking in small groups we ended with a pizza party and chocolate chip cookies. The kids got one slice of pizza and two cookies each and all they could do was complain, "I don't like this kind of pizza/cookie"or, "the pizza is cold" or, "the cookies aren't warm". I just wanted to take it all back. In reality, I wanted to make them all sit down and give them a speech about their attitudes, but settled for one on one interaction with several individuals instead.

At the end of the night all the volunteers just sat down and we all felt discouraged. We didn't commit 3 hours each Monday night to hear, "I hate you!" or be cussed out by kids. None of us came to break-up fights or try to maintain peace. Or did we? As we talked about why we were there I started searching my own motives and realized part of me came because I wanted to make a difference. I came because I thought I could be an asset, because working with kids from Africa fulfilled a need I had. However, I kept coming back because I belong to a Lord who desires for all of those kids to know Him.

Philippians 1 talks about the gospel being preached for two motives, a right one and a wrong one, but that Christ can use both. Verse 21 says, "for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain". I had a professor in college who once wrote that verse out on a white board with two blank spaces: for me, to live is _____ and to die is ______. As we talked about this verse she said something I'll never forget, "unless the first blank is Christ, the second will never be gain." That was a reality for me tonight. Through all the hardships and attitudes, during all the times I've been spit on, cussed out and flipped off, at the end of the day, if I endured it all for Christ then it wasn't for loss, but for gain.

It was a hard truth to remember during a rough night, but also encouraging and challenging.

I know the kids enjoyed celebration, I know they want to come and I know they talk about it when they get home. We made a difference, even if it doesn't seem like it, even if it seems like no ground was gained, if we were all their for God's glory and not our own, then we succeeded!