Coggin, Trevor, and Hannah serving dinner.
Youth camp started today! After a few days of preparation and rest, our first group of the week arrived this morning at 9:30. The youth attending camp this week are from a Christian school outside of Panama City, though many of the students are not Christians. The pastor of the church that sponsors the school brought 63 middle school students, along with their own counselors and support staff. As the bus pulled into camp, we welcomed them “Pine Cove style” by jumping and going crazy, letting the campers know how excited we are to have them here. After helping campers find their cabins, we jumped right into their first activity: tie-dying t-shirts! Autumn Dawn translated for the group, then the rest of our team got to work demonstrating for each cabin how to rubber-band and dye the shirts. This was a fun opportunity for us to use our choppy Spanish to interact with campers that we will see and play with for the next two days. After tie-dying, we prepared, served, and cleaned up from lunch. We even got to shuck the corn and peel the yucca that we collected yesterday!
Debi loved greeting the kids as they exited the bus.
It's tie-dye madness!
During our team devotional time, Autumn Dawn, Coggin, and Ellie reminded us of yesterday’s trek to the yucca field. It surprised all of us to find that the yucca plants were so easy to dig up, despite their tall bush. We also had no idea that such a flimsy-looking plant would yield such big roots! The Galbreaths led us to Proverbs 12:1-3, which tells us that the righteous cannot be uprooted. Ephesians 3:14-21 reminds us that if we are “rooted and established in love,” then we will be able to grasp the power and great love of God. When we begin to understand the fullness of God’s love, then we can share it and demonstrate it more effectively, both on the mission field and back at home. Our desire is that God’s love would be made known to the campers and staff here at camp, whether we speak the same language or not!
Our team loved getting to know the campers and staff today as we played with them, attempted conversation, sang silly songs in Spanish, and hid around camp for them to find us in tonight’s night game. Tomorrow starts early for us, but we are excited about more opportunities to serve “with the strength that God provides” (1 Peter 4:11)!
The Bons are working on the fruit of yesterday's labor (corn and yucca!).
