Buddy Body and Soul Mate

So, Guess who’s an American again?!  It’s me!  I landed in South Carolina on Monday, August 11th at about 6pm.  The flight was great, the connections were met and I had a window or aisle seat on all 3 flights.  Which is pretty much gold in my book for a 9 hour flight.  But I will tell you all about my re-entry back into the States, and my tourist times in Zakopane, Poland and Vienna, Austria after I tell you about my last camp!

LEVICE KECY

Levice was our last camp and it was the most difficult for us.  Right before the camp we had to pack up all of our things for the summer and get them ready to leave for the States because we were stopping for a brief moment from Poland to Austria to get them.  I think this task was the worst because I packed my brain in my suitcase and sent it to America.  Of course this is all figuritievely speaking because there is no way that I could really pack my brain and send it ahead of me by two weeks.  But I had the hardest time focusing on the last camp.  It was my 3rd one in a row, that means that I had to train the American team and listen to the same 3 days of training for a 3rd time.  And then I had to try to build relationships with students and then have my heart ripped out for a 3rd time when I have to tell them good-bye.  You might can see why I had such the lack of enthusiasm.  But we prayed.  We prayed for supernatural energy and joy.  We prayed for grace and love.  We prayed for God to come to camp.  And we got it, and He came, and He answered all of the above prayers.

I guess since we invited God to camp is why the devil decided to come too.

I said earlier, we experienced a ton of Spiritual Warfare.  My idea of spiritual warfare is when you are doing something for God and all the sudden all of these things start breaking down in front of your eyes.  It can sometimes be really discouraging, can sometimes make you lose heart, and above all can sometimes make you question the intentions of yourself, your friends, and God.  That might be confusing so I’ll explain what happened in list form.  If all of these things had happened individually, I’m not sure I would call it Spiritual Warfare.  (I also haven’t been through seminary and I am not a professional on the spiritual side of things, so please don’t quote my definition, and if you disagree I would love to hear your opinion.  just a disclaimer.)

1. A few days before the Americans were scheduled to land in Europe, we found out that their leader couldn’t make the trip on doctor’s orders due to a medical condition.  So this group of high school students, lead by his wife, were now coming over without their encourager, boss, and friend.  He was also supposed to give a talk on the “sin night”.
2. I guess it was a week or so prior to camp, the music/worship leader’s car was stolen along with his laptop and several other life necessities.  Did I mention the car was brand new?  So now he’s having to make payments on a car that he doesn’t have and still needs to try to buy a new one.  He and his family was completely distraught.
3. After we arrived at the camp site, several team members got sick.  My leader came down with something like the flu.  A ton of kids from the American team were throwing up or laid out with a cold.
4. The day of the Sin talk or the Body and Soul day- which is a big deal, because it sets up for the presentation of the Gospel- we had an all day hike to Oravsky Castle.  Since we were on the hike all day, they forgot to find an MC for the evening program.  So about an hour before the program they asked me to MC with Laci the husband of the camp director.  I was Soul, Soul Mate, and he was Buddy, Buddy Body.  Those were our names.  God definitely provided us with energy and ideas to make it work.
5. So like I said in #1, the team leader was suppose to give the talk, but he couldn’t make it.  Then the talk was passed on to his intern who came on the trip, who didn’t realize that the camp wasn’t going to be all about Jesus, and wasn’t sure how to speak to non-believers in the way Josiah Venture suggests.  So he passed the talk onto Laura, my team leader.  She got sick with the flu-like-junk the day before the sin talk.  So Jennifer took the load.  Jennifer is a woman in Slovakia who just finished Seminary for Christian Education.  She went to SK to check it out to move over there.  She is also a perfectionist, and went nuts because she didn’t have time to make her talk perfect.  The beautiful part about God’s will is, He makes things perfect.  Her talk was probably one of the best ones at the end of the week.
6. Laci the day before the all day hike was helping someone overcome their fear of bridges by chasing her over the bridge like a gorilla.  While running full speed over the bridge his foot collided with a metal bar.  They took him to a doctor and found out it was broken.
7. So the day of the gospel talk, this huge group of kids came into our eating room.  Apparently the hotel had double book the place and was now informing us that all of our meals had to be pushed back and they tried to kick us out of our room.  They were doing a film camp and it was called Hollywood. 
8. That same day the men were cutting some wood for the camp fire that night and threw a branch down the hill toward the log pile.  Little did they know that the branch would hit the power line on the way down.  It knocked the power out for a solid 3 hours.  Making it extremely difficult to practice for the evening program.
9. The camp director, who was giving the gospel talk that night, had a fever a couple of hours before her talk.
10. The American team performed the drama on the night of the gospel and one of the girls in the performance had an athsma attack.  She had to run out immediately and eventually was taken to the hospital.  She was fine the next day, but she hadn’t had athsma problems in several years.
11. After the gospel talk was presented, the Slovak team decided they wanted to prepare a prayer walk for the student to process their thoughts and feelings in a more intimate setting.  So they put out candles and decorated the stations.  Just after the talk, Zuzi, one of the Slovak girls, runs down to me and tells me that one of the stations had caught on fire.  I ran up and got a bottle of water and opened the door to the corridoor and I couldn’t see the end from the hall full of smoke.  We got the fire out, but it was slightly scary.

So after all was said and done after the 5th day and the gospel was presented, we had 2 students come to know about Christ, some fire damage, a hospital bill, and a testimony of how God worked in this camp.

This is Sarah, Laura, and I with the camp directors Edita and Laci.  They were GREAT!!!