Yup, that’s a real word. It’s a real place, actually, and the site of a youth camp that I attended along with about 14 other people from OM Chile and 110 Chileans around my age. It was wonderful (and exhausting (but mostly wonderful))!! Each year the Intensive Training group experiences a youth camp from a local church and this year we attended the camp of the church I’ve been attending. I really enjoy the youth of my church (and sorry, I realize I’m using the word “youth” in the Chilean understanding of its age range, somewhere between 18- early 30′s, I’d say), and it was really, really great to get to know people better and deepen friendships. My first year here in Chile I attended a different church. After a year passed, I still felt on the outskirts of the church, just a visitor. Being a preacher’s kid and growing up always involved in the heart of a church, that was really difficult for me and added to my feelings of being unrooted here. I switched churches and began attending a church where I found the services boring but had felt welcome and at-home within its youth group since I first arrived. I’m so glad I made the switch. Especially after this youth camp we went to, I really feel like I have a church family here in Santiago and good Chilean friends. Praise God!
Yup, that’s a real word. It’s a real place, actually, and the site of a youth camp that I attended along with about 14 other people from OM Chile and 110 Chileans around my age. It was wonderful (and exhausting (but mostly wonderful))!! Each year the Intensive Training group experiences a youth camp from a local church and this year we attended the camp of the church I’ve been attending. I really enjoy the youth of my church (and sorry, I realize I’m using the word “youth” in the Chilean understanding of its age range, somewhere between 18- early 30′s, I’d say), and it was really, really great to get to know people better and deepen friendships. My first year here in Chile I attended a different church. After a year passed, I still felt on the outskirts of the church, just a visitor. Being a preacher’s kid and growing up always involved in the heart of a church, that was really difficult for me and added to my feelings of being unrooted here. I switched churches and began attending a church where I found the services boring but had felt welcome and at-home within its youth group since I first arrived. I’m so glad I made the switch. Especially after this youth camp we went to, I really feel like I have a church family here in Santiago and good Chilean friends. Praise God!
Anyway, back to the youth camp experience. What I really enjoyed about the experience is that I felt involved within a church again. One afternoon I taught about evangelism to the entire group (in Spanish for over an hour, whew!). In one evening session I from up front translated to English the message of the visiting pastor, and for the majority of the other sessions translated from my chair for the IT participants who needed it. At the end of the 10-day youth camp we planned to do two days of evangelism in the little town near the camp, so the IT and I prepared ahead of time so that they would be ready to do some clown dramas for the little children and more serious dramas for the adults. As the days of evangelism grew closer, I went with a group to go talk to the manager of the biggest (and only) supermarket in town. She, as well as the owner of the store, are Christians and they offered us the use of their parking lot and sidewalk outside to host our evangelistic activities that we did, like free massages, free blood pressure checks, free haircuts, free hugs, prayer, songs and games for the children, face painting, balloon animals, as well as our OM dramas accompanied by a short evangelistic message. It was a huge blessing to have that site. What came about because of that meeting, though, is that some of the group also wanted to do a flash mob within the store in order to draw attention to what we would be doing outside. Since I have the most experience in organizing flash mobs (having done a grand total of….. one…..), I suddenly became in charge of that, too (though with a lot of help).
The flash mob went well, with the store letting us use their sound system to play a song, use extra uniforms to stage some of our people as workers, and hide some of our people in their upstairs offices. Those five guys came out and stood on a balcony overlooking the store, and when the music started they grabbed the attention of the shoppers by singing at the top of their lungs. As they made their way down the stairs, more males joined in singing from all over the store. At the chorus all of the girls started singing from their different places in the store. We all moved together into the center of the supermarket and sang together, worshipping God. With over 100 people participating and in four-part harmony, it was a pretty cool experience. We then called to the shoppers around us to come outside and participate in what we were doing.
I want to speak more of this camp and I’m also going to post a bunch of photographs (because now that I have my professional camera with me, I got some wonderful shots), but that will be in another post because I need to head out for the day. God bless you!
Chau.
We had an amazing day at the children’s home last week. It was hands down the best day we’ve had for a really long time. We were a large group that day because the other children’s home was gone on an outing so everyone came to our hogar. The preparation time before we went to the home was pretty hectic and we wondered if our plans were too ambitious for the day. When we arrived to the hogar, though, and began our program, we found the boys connected and interested in what we were doing.
David and Goliath
The IT really ran the program. I asked to step back and photograph the goings-on, and it was great to see the IT really stretch themselves to present a puppet show all in Spanish. We started the first program of the theme ‘Warriors’. They prepared a drama about David and Goliath and one of them gave a short message after, speaking about courage, fearlessness and strength. They had an elaborate, multi-step craft planned for the boys that had to do with David’s bag of stones, and there was some anxiety about whether it would be too challenging.
It went wonderfully.
The boys were sent out to search for 5 smooth stones (which could have easily become a time of stone throwing, but praise God, it didn’t). When they came back to the tables they either wrote or drew some of their fears onto the rocks. Most didn’t want to do it at first because they didn’t want to show any weakness in front of the other boys. With some encouragement, though, they began writing and drawing. The younger ones wrote down fears like ghosts or zombies, but some of the older boys really wrote down some deep fears like being alone, a family member dying, and being bullied.
The most special part of the day then came when the boys came to us to pray over what they’d written on the rocks, and that God would take away those fears. It was incredibly moving to have that experience with the boys, praying one-on-one with them. Some of the boys, as well, were touched by it and had tears in their eyes. They were able to get rid of their emotions in the next step of the craft, when they went out to the soccer field and tried tossing their rocks into a bucket from far away.
The afternoon was really wonderful. After the program was done we continued playing with the boys. My sister taught us a game awhile back that we did that afternoon with the boys, and it was awesome! 
A boy jumped on the back of one of the guy leaders and then had to climb forward, over the shoulders of the leader, down the front, through the legs, then back up the back of the leader to their starting point, all without touching the ground. When two full-size adults do it, it’s hilarious to watch and really hard to do, but with little boys participating it was a little bit easier for the leaders to help out and pull them back into position. Still hilarious, just slightly easier. There was also a lot of other roughhousing happening and it was great to see the boys laughing and having a wonderful time with all of the physical play.
It was really a great day at the children’s home. God blessed the afternoon and I pray that the boys see Him answering their prayers.
 | Pam on Weighing heavily on my he… |
| Pam on Stones of Fear |
| Pam on When the world around me … |
 | Becky Durham on Are You Really Free? |
| Pam on Humbled at the Hogar |
