One day down...

So I'm writing at the end of the first day of English camp. It was, as expected, a crazy and hectic day but it seemed to go well overall. The students, mostly 17 to 20 years old, are divided into 6 groups, each led by an intern. In my group, we have 16 students and 3 short termers, Sharon, Shannon and Dave, who is an associate pastor at a Cleveland CMA church and a teacher for 35 years. Needless to say, I gave him the go ahead to take the lead in the group since he is very comfortable teaching.

The days will follow the same schedule through the week. We have breakfast at the church, where the camp is held and where many of the students are sleeping, at 7 a.m. Then we have a worship service with some testimony and then we have about 2 hours for teaching in our individual groups. My group sat outside under a tree, which felt very missionary-like. Although many speak a little English, most just seem eager to practice and my goal today was just to get comfortable with them. So we played a lot of games like birdie on the perch as Penn Staters call it. It's basically organized chaos in motion. We have lunch at the church again then each afternoon, we will do field trips with the students.

Today we visited the silk farm and the war museum. I never knew how they made silk - now I do and now I understand why it can be so expensive. The cocoons of silk worms are boiled and spun into thread then it goes through a million processes until it becomes the beautiful scarves we love. The war museum is essentially an overgrown field with a bunch of USSR, Cambodian and American weapons and tanks left over from the Vietnam War. Most of the kids had no idea what it was from, they just liked climbing all over it.

The teams seem to be doing well and we interns have settled into our roles. On Sunday, we spent the whole afternoon taking the different groups around, to market, to church, to internet, where ever they needed to go. It was nice to be needed. But we've talked about the importance of getting away for a little each night, so Nat, Stan and I are downtown right now, enjoying some ice cream and spring rolls and checking up on email. To make it through the next 6 weeks, we'll need to make sure we recharge instead of going 110 percent every day.

I've read through James twice now and I haven't felt God's call to leave it yet. Apparently there are some lessons in it that I haven't learned yet.

Prayer requests:
The students - there are some really great kids who seem to eager to learn English, but also about Jesus and what He can do for them
The short termers - most of them are doing great and adapting wonderfully to the food, the different schedule, the need for flexibility, the culture. Others are really struggling with even simple things like walking to the church. Please pray that the interns can push them to not miss what God has for them here. It takes more than just getting on the plane.
The interns - Stan, Elias, Natalie, Emily and Jonathan (and me of course). We'll be together for another 6 weeks and God has blessed us with amazing closeness already