Adventure Stories

Cooking grilled cheese over a "hobo stove,"
a survival cooker fashioned from a tin can

When's the last time you made grilled marshmallow sandwiches over a hobo stove?

Or practised twisting rabbit snares in a tipi during a hailstorm?

Or spent the night camping in a caboose, or on the top of a climbing wall tower?


Was it the last time you counseled at summer camp? Sweet! Me too!

A hut I built with one of my wrangler friends.
It definitely has some Ugandan influence...

This summer has definitely been a good one for cultivating memories--not to mention jungle skills. It's 10-12-year-old camp right now, in which the campers get to sign up for a "focus skill" to learn their favourite activity in-depth. I'm instructing Wilderness, meaning that I now get to spend thirteen hours a week teaching kids survival skills. We build solar stills to extract water from grass, make sample snares, bake and grill over the fire, lash logs for shelters, build survival kits...

Feathering a stick to make tinder

Of all the sessions I've taught so far, my favourite one happened during a thunderstorm. Since one of the campers was terrified of thunder, we held the activity inside the cabin. Lacking the usual hatchets, knives, matches and firewood, I instead spent a good twenty minutes demonstrating bandana uses: bandaging, pouch-folding, slingshotting cotton balls...

The Caboose, furnished with bunks to camp in

"Tell us an adventure survival story!" someone then asked. "Like the time you were eaten by an alligator or something!"

Well, I didn't have an alligator story. But I DID have a malaria one! The rest of the hour then, was spent in missions adventure storytelling. About me, about the pioneers of old, about the miracles happening to the persecuted church today... It was SO cool to see the wonder in their eyeballs as they heard the true testimonies of God's power, and the daring lives of His followers.

But the power of storytelling doesn't always go from leader to camper. Sometimes it's the other way around. Last Monday as we were making s'mores around our Snack-Out Night fire and sharing testimonies, one little girl put up her hand to say something. She began telling her story, one of immense heartbreak. How could a life that young know so much tragedy? I asked, beginning to feel weighed down until God reminded me "It's alright...it's not your job to carry these kids' burdens. I got this." And sure enough, He did.

On the last night of camp, after we'd gotten everyone finally settled in bed as opposed to bounding wildly across the room singing songs from Frozen, I read from biblical prophecies for devotions. We started in Isaiah, about Jesus, and ended with the Revelation passage about the new heaven and the new earth. As I read, the cabin door creaked open and this girl and another counselor walked in from where they'd been talking after evening chapel.

"Can I tell you what I saw, after?" she asked. I nodded and kept reading. Once we were through, and before I went out to get Bibles for some of the campers, I waited for her to tell her story. What I heard made my jaw drop.

"I heard God tonight," she said quietly. "He said my name and told me I don't have to be scared anymore. And then I saw Him. He opened a big wooden door, and it was very bright inside. I entered and saw my brother (who had been killed in an accident). He said he was ok, and that he was saved. We talked, and then Jesus said it was time to go, but I'd see Him in me dream..."

Your God is alive and well. He's been here for some crazy stuff at camp, and not all the stories make it to this blog. Some of the sights I've seen have been hard: outbreaks of anger, effects of hurt, times of warfare. But His victory is there too, and it's been in some of the craziest times so far that I've known it the most. In every hardship and highlight, He's been with us. He is here, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else.

A Cry in the Night

My guitar is getting some good use: around campfires,
on sleep-outs, waking up campers in the morning...

Thunk.

My hand, barely visible in the darkness, contacted the rough wood-paneled wall. Floundering its way to the left, the hand struck a new surface--one with some give to it.

Ah, the door.

"I--need--to--use--the--wah-shroom!" A small voice beside me whimpered through the blackness.

"We're getting there," I assured her. If only I 
could find the knob!

(It keeps going! Please click "Read More.")

Camp Life Continues

"Jesus is the Son of God?"  The camper turned to me, her eyes wide with incredulous interest.
"I did not know that."

This girl, like so many, is hungry for answers. Satisfying ones. They want to know about people and God and life and death and eternity, but some of them have never encountered a Bible before. The stories of history told therein are entirely new. Other children have had glimpses of Jesus here and there, unanchored fragments


A perfect footprint impression,
outlined in a puddle of residual bug spray

that rotate like loose pieces of a half-missing jigsaw puzzle. Gathering their pieces together, they ask:

"But can't you only be a Christian if you go to a Christian school? That's what my friends say."

"Don't people become angels when they die?"


"Why did God create bad guys?"

(Click "Read More" to Continue)

Tangent, the Un-Magical

First full day, almost done.


I looked down from where I sat on the grass, past the rows of heads in front of me, past the gazebo where we were having chapel, past the thick poplar forest, to where the hills beyond met a low summer sky. How long ago it seemed that I'd been standing on the archery range, instructing during morning activities! Between plugged toilets, cabin politics, behavioural issues and other challenges, it seemed as though I'd been quenching little fires all day.

A rainbow over the road thrills my cabin group

I still loved camp. Loved the flow of life at camp. Loved the idea of working with God through all the intensity of camp. But looking back on the day, the only words I could think of were "when it rains, it pours." The sight of blood interrupted these thoughts. Rifling through my bag, I found a Kleenex for the tooth someone had just pulled out during chapel. Suddenly, I heard my camp name being called.

(To read of my looming blunder, please click Read More...)

Welcome to Your New World

"Archers to the line!"

Ten grass-stained sneakers march five aspiring young Robinhoods towards the shooting range.

"Ready on the line."

Ten sets of toes step into position, pointing in the correct direction, beside five wooden bows.

"Pick up your bows..."

Five elfen hands wrap themselves eagerly around the sleek bows. You jog down the line, ensuring every hand has found its correct place on the instrument. Arrow rests up, bowstrings under the left forearm...good.

"Knock your arrows..."

 As five dull "click's" sound though the hot summer air, the last command is on your tongue.

"Aim and fire at will."

A single thwack resounds as one of the arrows embeds itself into the target. Boings, thuds, and clatters accompany the sound, depending on the direction of the other arrows. By the time those ten sneakers patter away from the range however, many more thwacks have brought satisfaction to the shooters. You're grinning too, content in your assigned role as this weeks' morning archery instructor. Still thinking about the expression of bewildered elation on the face of the little girl who hit the bullseye this morning, you put away the targets and rehang the last bow.

On to the next task.

Chapels are almost always held in serene outdoor settings,
such as this meadow. Open fires, acoustic guitars, campfire songs...
It doesn't get much better than this.

A remarkable make-over one of my delightful
young ladies gave me

Joining your campers, co-leading Bible study on top of the climbing tower, attempting to form a line for Canteen, moving through afternoon activities and finally heading to an outdoor chapel service all follow. These sound like they should be easy tasks. But to refer to the act of "keeping eight energetic ten-year-olds in the same general vicinity and running in the same general direction for 23 hours a day" as "daunting" would be an understatement met with raised, weary eyebrows.

 Why this particular work is especially challenging--and especially rewarding--is that, as its poster explains, this camp runs for foster home, group home and single-parent families. Because of the challenges campers sometimes face, you as a staffer encounter things here that may be different from "regular" camps. But that's what sets this summer apart as especially for ministry. In a place where you realize you could never accomplish a thing by your own ability, God more often is given His proper place as Power Source. And living through Him wherever you are, whether volunteering abroad or writing papers at home or teaching archery at camp, is the best place you could be.

Training, Continued

The second week of staff training--the week I'm in the middle of now--has been all about learning. We've heard seminars on behavioural challenges, worked in sessions for developing Bible studies, fought water fights...practical stuff. It's the workshops that we're taking about Bible study development and story-telling effects that really have me excited. Not only do we get to build our own cabin studies about a particular Bible story (this year from the biblical book of Joshua), but we can sign up for the opportunity to give messages in chapel illustrated with (guess what!) animal balloons and magic tricks! Some of the illusions I'll be learning are ones at which I used to marvel as a youngster myself, on the receiving end of kids' ministry. Between those and the chance to expand my balloon skills, I'm pretty "pumped."

In other news, getting into the routine of camp life has meant becoming integrated to a culture all of its own. For one thing, as a new staff member you must mandatorily be given a "camp name." Mine, after one or two attempts, finally stuck with "Tangent." Sounds adventuresome enough...

For another thing, you begin to realize that, as a group of camp staff, you have together become a distinct and noble tribe. By the smell of bug spray perpetually clinging to your population, the varying degrees of sunburn on every face, and the essence of campfire smoke on everyone's clothes, you can readily identify one another as members of the clan. You realize that in only a few days this staff, united in Spirit and sunburn, will be opening bug-spray perfumed arms to welcome busloads of excited campers. Here goes something...

Training. Begins, Now.

"Smackos," s'mores tacos, sizzling in anticipation of
the snack-out we'll have with campers every Tuesday

"Everybody's got a water buffalo..." the a cappella strains of this familiar tune, traditionally sung by a cucumber, echoed through the gym as we fought to keep our grip on the water buffalo's head. I don't know if you've ever clung to the face of a long-soul-less water buffalo before, its blunt, breathless nose extending awkwardly close to your own. If so, you'll know that it's the stuff memories are made of. If not, you can probably imagine.





In case you're wondering why staff training for summer camp has me wrestling large, taxidermied African mammals, don't worry: I'll get to that. First things first.



Training, Day One:

On our first full day of training, while most of the staff sat in a first aid course, I dangled precariously from a precipice. --Ok, actually more of a tower. The climbing wall tower, to be exact. The entire day being devoted to literally "learning the ropes" of how to lead wall climbing, I learned how to set up, check equipment, instruct campers, tie knots, and belay climbers. We also got to climb a good deal, and to practice belaying each other. --And to lie on the grass and eat freezies.

The next two days were all about SET UP! Washing, wiping, moving, organizing, assembling, mopping, wrestling that buffalo head out of the music and drama room we were organizing... Moments in between sometimes included a trip to the staff lounge to visit its bottomless supplies of Gatorade, chocolate bars and candy! Oh yeah, and fresh fruit and granola bars. This is shaping up to be a great summer...
 

Back to the Harvest

Nine--NINE!--pages of the calendar have flipped since I first left for Uganda, but the time has come to move back to a mission zone. Of course, anywhere there are people there's potential for ministry, so I've never left the harvest field in that sense. But going to the part of the field God has me now involves a move. It involves going back to learning a new role, a new culture, and a new routine. Going back to being stretched, and challenged, and scared. Going back to living out of a suitcase for months at a time! Though it may sound suspiciously similar to my life in Uganda, this time mission life won't leave me waking up on the other side of the Atlantic. Or even the other side of the province.

The place? A summer youth ranch. Role: senior counselor.

This is something I've always wanted to do. Outdoorsiness, cabins, tents, climbing walls, horses, ranch life...it's the stuff of my lifetime-ago dreams. And it's even kids' ministry! Not that it will be easy or anything. But if God started it, He'll finish it. He's in the details as well as the big picture.

And what's that big picture going to look like? That's what we're about to find out...

The Grand Finale

Friday and Saturday

Friday. The work-hard-play-hard day when you spend the morning on duty (in our case washing again the now-much-dirtier dishes used at Thursday's Valentine's dinner) and then go out as tourists with the team for the afternoon...

Our first stop: the roadside fish taco stand for an as-real-as-it-gets Mexican lunch. Second stop: the market. Third stop: the beach.





                   What's going on here?

 Standing beside a normal-sized person for

     comparison, after spending some time

                    sinking into the sand.



Everything about the coast is endless:
endless ocean, endless beach, endlessly breaking waves
 stretching out to the endless sky...





Chicken tacos, rice & refried beans

Last stop: the restaurant where our YWAM leader always takes the entire team to cap off the week. As if we could still handle more food after tackling all the (amazingly good) southern-style sustenance at the restaurant, within a few minutes of our returning to base camp, a bonfire was blazing for s'mores night.

Saturday, 3:00 p.m. We're now packed into the YWAM van, waiting in line at the border. Beside me a little girl is standing on someone's shoulders, juggling as the person on the bottom wanders between lanes of ponderous traffic. Every few minutes we drive pass vending stands set up in the middle of the road; meanwhile ,other sellers stroll up and down the rows of vehicles offering everything from giant porcelain turtles to live puppies. It's anyone's guess as to what's about to float past the window next. Although a few bags of fresh, hot churros (and also a slingshot) have come into the van since we arrived at the line-up, more is going out the windows as we hand sandwiches, bananas, stickers and toys to the vendors and their kids. That's the greatest thing about traveling with this group: there's nary a single ministry opportunity that passes by untaken.







Walking towards the beach, we could already
 smell the salt in the air.





Migrant Camp Outreach

Thursday

"This is going to be an awesome next few hours," I stated, as we stood waiting outside the vans before going to outreach. It was Thursday night: migrant camp evangelism time. These are the camps--more or less their own little villages--housing migrant workers who have been trucked up from their home states (usually Oaxaca) having been promised "jobs" and "homes" here on the Baja produce ranches. The work hours are long, and the living conditions are generally rough. But I'm told that people are far more welcoming of evangelical ideas here than they are back in places like Oaxaca, where hostility towards the church is still all too common.

Playing string figures and handing out coloured paper and markers:
 I was touched when a girl gave one of the pieces back to me
--folded into a heart-shaped card with my name written on it.

Although outreach nights like these used to centre around evangelism, with a New Testament film and a speaker in the program, the response was so great that Foundation for His Ministry has now switched to a more discipleship-based structure. Migrant outreach now involves holding camp-wide Bible studies to disciple families to take the gospel back to those unreached places when they move on again.

But it's not just all talk: we also spend a good portion of the evening serving a big dinner to everybody, playing games with the many excited kids and handing out gifts.

This morning's work assignment: washing the dust off of exactly 396 plates (yes, we counted beforehand) brought out of storage in preparation for a Valentine's Day couple's dinner at the mission.

 

A Regular Day at the Mission...

Wednesday

When a "regular day" includes working in a place like
 the Prayer Garden pictured here, life is probably pretty good.
 

"...and one of you girls will have to go to the main kitchen," said the jobs coordinator after Sala Wednesday morning. Thus I came to be standing over large cutting boards alongside two other team members, scalping strawberries and dicing roma tomatoes. I found it to be pleasant enough work, especially because of the smell of bread dough being made nearby. When we all sat down to lunch, I decided that it would be una buena idea to try chomping on a slice of Jalapeño pepper. It wasn't bad, but if I had thought to wait until the end of lunch to eat it, then maybe I actually would have been able to taste my meal.

 
In the afternoon we took advantage of a job offer to clean the gift shop. This was especially great because it gave us the chance to combine mission work with souvenier shopping. The rest of the afternoon passed in the prayer garden as we pruned and deadheaded plants in this oasis set apart as a place to seek God. I always knew those hours working at a summer job in a greenhouse would be good for SOMETHING on the mission field...

A sign above the wall in the Bible School classroom

 To cap off an already full day, the whole team headed over to the Bible School for a dinner that the students put on as a fundraiser for their missions trip to Oaxaca. The school runs an intensive two-year training program designed to equip young (and older) Christians to be missionaries in their own (usually unreached) regions. Because of sponsorship for the students, tuition is free.

One muy delicioso chicken dinner later--the best part of which had to have been the all-you-can-eat nachos--everyone crossed the parking lot over to the church for the Wednesday night service. Do you know how much fun it is to sing worship songs like "10,000 Reasons" and "Blessed Be Your Name" en Español?

A Day of Three Outreaches

Tuesday, Day Three


The sky had just lightened to a pale blue behind the palm trees when a white bus pulled up in front of our dorms. The time was 6:30 AM, and Lana and I had signed up to accompany the daycare bus on its rounds this morning to pick up kids from the surrounding communities. Thus I found myself riding up and down through a series of dusty village streets in the early morning, watching out the window as little niños y niñas ran out to the bus from behind their backyard fences. More and more of them filed in each time we stopped, until the bus was fairly filled with youngsters.

A strong influence of Catholicism
is evident in culture.

My ridiculously limited Spanish vocabulary hindered conversing much with them, but at least we could play together! Using whatever supplies I found in my bag--namely a piece of paper and a couple of Band-Aids--we managed to make a puppet and play "clinic" until ending up talking on "telefonos" with our hands. (Imitating a ringtone and saying "hola" and "adios" fortunately for me doesn't require much knowledge of the language.) Once at the daycare, I stayed long enough to style a few hairdos for the niños, and then it was time for me to head off to morning Sala. Speaking of which, here's how a typical day for a volunteer here goes:

(Please click Read More to continue)

A Tour, a Duel, and a Most Bizarre Snack

Birds are singing, my tongue is burning, a spider is hiking across my keyboard, and I'm sitting in a tree. That's what's going on right now, in case you were wondering. It's break-time between lunch and work assignments on Tuesday--our second day here--and I decided that this inviting-looking tree in front of the beautiful arched buildings here would be a better place than the dorm room to blog about yesterday. What about the burning tongue, you ask? That would be the result of my attempting just now to consume an extremely sour but unbeatably fresh grapefruit from the orchard here. But back on topic:





Yesterday morning was mostly taken up by a tour of the grounds here. I found myself officially re-immersed in a world of the taste of macadamia nuts and empanadas, the sound of ringneck doves calling from their hideouts in bougainvillea, and the sight of palm trees just waiting to be climbed.

Guavas, as fresh as they come

In the afternoon five of were headed off to sort macadamia nuts when the Job Coordinator ran over and asked for two people to go to the prayer garden instead. That's where I ended up, weeding in the experimental orchard. It's deliciously pleasant to be able to live and work in the shade of a stand of banana trees again. Another perk to the job was being able to partake in the sweet, pink guavas fallen fresh from the trees.

The fruit, the likes of which I'd never encountered nor
heard of before,turns out to be called a cherimoya.
It has it's own Wikipedia page if you're that curious to learn more.
 

At one point, Norberto, the gardener, brought over a spikey green tropical fruit for us to try. Splitting it open, he showed us how to remove the large black seeds and eat the juicy white pulp. It wasn't bad!

On Monday nights, visitors always get to babysit at the orphanage to give the house parents a break. Of all the activities we did together with our house girls--designing sticker posters, making bracelets, decorating cookies--I'd have to say that the funnest for me was the crazy balloon-sword duelling we did towards the end. Battling it out with a couple of squeaking inflatable swords to the sound of laughter mixed with intense Spanish music...it's a pretty priceless moment.
 

Back on Southern Soil

I'm not sure what it is that makes oversized white rocks so compelling, but the sight of the Rocky Mountains as seen from the sky--their thousand peaks sharply defined in shadow and light--certainly tends to invoke in the viewer twinges of awe.

At least that's what I decided again as our plane passed over them enroute to Seattle, and then to San Diego. The sound of a hearty "Hola!" that greeted us as we stepped out of our taxi soon after landing let us know that we had reached our YWAM group. The following hours found our procession of white YWAM vans cruising southbound, along the Baja peninsula as the lowering sun played on the desert around us. Onwards stretched the highway, through cultivated valleys and white-washed Spanish cities, passed tumble weed-riddled fences and between mountains flanked with twisted cactus.

At last, after the colours around us had faded into darkness, we pulled in front of a familiar green taco shop. As soon as I stepped out and walked up to the open-air front of the building, one of the ladies standing there smiled at me and did the motions for making a string figure. Surprised, I nodded excitedly "yeah--that was me!" and she gave me a hug. I couldn't believe she still recognised me after a full year as the girl who had done the string figures one other night, many months ago.

After downing a few very good, very authentic tacos--and of course a bottle of Manzana Lift, I ran out to the van to return again with a multicoloured string. I'm counting what time we spent there as a highlight of our trip (even though the trip has only begun), as we played with the kids and browsed at the little market. Soon however, the time came to file back in the van and complete the drive to the orphanage. When my feet hit the sandy ground as I stepped out of the van, something else hit me: the smell of the night air, the sight of a sky full of stars, and the realisation this is going to be a great week!

Return to Vicente Guerrero

...There. The alarm is set for 3:00AM. Two fully packed (and somewhat weighty) suitcases are parked, zippered shut, on the floor beside us. The only sounds in the room are the rustle of pages from the missionary biography Lana's reading, and the clacking of my laptop's keys as I type. Technically we should be sleeping now--after all, we're getting up again to drive to the airport in only a matter of hours. Let me explain...

 

(To continue, please click Read More.)