Youth Camp O9

I am finally getting back to blogging and letting you all see what we did this summer. I promised you that I would share some pictures about Youth Camp so here they are, in three parts. Our youth camp here in Ukraine was by the Black Sea this year. It was a wonderful time and we had a great camp with the Lord's help. We all missed Katrina very much, as she was supposed to lead camp this year, but had to be in the States getting a broken leg fixed. Here is the whole group by the sea, with the team flags. Slavic came to camp for the first time this year. He is from our village and from the looks of it he is enjoying camp so far.

We set up our tent in the trees along the beach and set up camp. We all slept in tents, bathed in the sea, ate food cooked over the fire and used the bathroom in outhouses. The weather was nice, no rain. It was cool in the mornings and evening and pretty warm during the day, but not unbearably hot. We thank the Lord for a great location. Here you can see our church set up. Workers tents are on the one side and behind the cross was the boy's tents. Looking the other way was the kitchen, more worker's tents and then the girl's tents.

Here we are all unloading and getting ready for the week.

We had 25 campers this year and we split them up into two teams. Our team leaders for this first team, Light of God, was Jeff and Tonya Duddek. Their helper and translator was Vita. They were a great team. Their team learned the most Bible verses. Thanks Jeff and Tonya for all your work!!!

The next team was the Seraphims. Jeff and Stephannie Appling were their leaders and Stepon as helper and translator. They did a wonderful job leading their team. The teens really learned to work together and won with the best time in the morning obstacle course several times. Good job Applings!!!

Nodiea and Roman led the singing for us in the services. The teens really liked to sing and Roman did a good job leading them.

Not only were the Applings and Duddeks leaders they acted out skits every night before the evening preaching.
It was a great way to get some spiritual truths through to the teenagers. The teens caught on to the idea and they even came up with some great skits of there own. Here is one that they shared in the night service about sharing God's love with the needy. It was a great idea.

Every day we gave the teenagers time for them to have personal time with God, reading their Bibles and praying. I am so glad that we did this. One boy told me that he couldn't wait until this time every day. He would run to his own quite place on the beach so not to waste even one minute of his alone time. How many of us are that serious about our prayer time?

We had a ticket system at camp where the teens could earn tickets for memorizing verses, taking part in the evening services, and extra work. Then they turned them in at the "store" for snack food. Some of the teens really got into earning tickets. Faith ran our store for us. Thanks Faith!!!

We had so much fun this year. Our theme was "On the trail with Jesus". Every day we learned something new about staying on the path to Heaven. Many of the teens said that it was the best youth camp yet. Thanks to all who prayed and gave.