Adventures in Youth Camp

375 kids plus all the staff makes for a lot of people in this meeting room!

Some new friends: Amanda, one of my roomates to my right; Paul, a Taiwanese friend in the cell group I've been going to; Ruby, a university student at BIOLA, home for the summer; and a couple of camp kids to our far right and left.

Drama workshop kids - Taiwanese people LOVE cameras and posing for pictures. The peace sign is very popular, I'm not sure why.

This is me and Annie, my co-leader for the workshop. She also attends the English cell group I've been going to. She's super sweet and a lot of fun.

Group photo with "teacher Sharon" :)

Playing "Have you ever" as a time-filler at the end of class on Friday.

Well...I've been away for a few days at the Banner church Youth Camp. I posted a bunch of these pics on my Facebook too but for those of you that don't have Facebook here they are again. This has been a great week and would have been greater except that I've had a cold (again) and a cough (again) all week which was no fun but otherwise had a great time. I think maybe since Alaska had beautiful fresh air and Taiwan has dusty polluted air and also since I'm constantly in really hot heat and then really dry cold (inside airconditioning) that my lungs and throat are trying to make the adjustment. I read about this sort of thing before I came but somehow pictured myself as Mighty Sharon who would never get sick from dusty pollution because I am Immune to All Bad Things Happening. (Hah!) This is the problem of being an optomist. But anyway I'm getting better and as they say, it could be much worse. :)

So we left for...good grief, I don't even remember where the youth camp was...Daya? I think..still in Taichung, but about a half-hour scooter drive from our apartment. We stayed at an old American Air Force base, so our housing was kind of oldish looking (furnishing-wise) but really nice and spacious, and the meeting hall was nicely laid out and there was a pool which I intending to swim in but never did. The camp was a Bilingual youth camp (the bilingual aspect drew a lot of students looking to practice English), and the Bilingual part was the responsibility of the English zone from Banner church which is led by my roommate Amanda. There were technically only four "legal" foreigners at camp (Amanda, me, and our couple friends Mandy and Jacob) and 400 kids (well, 375), so..but we had several other "foreigners" who were actually Taiwanese but had been to university in the States or for whatever reason spoke English so it was really nice to have kind of a "week away" to get to know everybody.

I heard about 50% (approximately) of the youth were Christians, and most of the other 50% had never been to a church camp and some had no idea what Christianity was about. The youth from Banner church were entirely responsible for the camp and did an EXCELLENT job with the activities and the worship and the whole organization of everything. I was so impressed that these young kids were so passionate about reaching their peers for Christ and devoted so much time and planning into this camp. The English zone was responsible for a chunk of time one day to do "games" with the kids so we had planned a big outside game for them, but we had a (small) typhoon so it rained cats and dogs all day that day. But it started raining like 20 minutes before the game time was supposed to begin. So we had to be really spontaneous about coming up with indoor games to entertain these 400 kids. The Lord really helped us and we very quickly came up with a list of games that we executed with no problems and the kids all looked like they had a GREAT time. We played an old favorite that I remembered from our youth group at ACS (way back in the day), where you have two teams and number them off and then put a ball or rag or something in the middle and call a number and both numbers from each team have to try to grab the object and bring it back to their side. We had to do this with four teams since we had SO MANY kids and we used a big rubber game ball and it was a good time. We also did some relay races and stuff.

Then that night was "international night" so the foreigners did a small drama, a couple of "games" with volunteers from the audience, a testimony from Jacob, and worship songs in English.

The next day the kids took part in what they called a "Grand Tour". They were divided into groups of about 20 kids each and each kid was given about 30 NT (less than $1 US) per person which they had to use to get to specific checkpoints in Taichung AND find a way to eat lunch. This really challenged their creativity. They were sent out with no cell phones (exept the leader emergency only phone) and no other money except the 30 NT. Some of the groups managed to catch rides with delivery trucks; one group even got some police cars to take them to their destinations! The groups washed windows in restaraunts, helped store owners advertise on the sidewalk, weeded a garden at an elementary school, sang songs for the old folks at a nursing home, prayed for people who lived next to a temple, and in return they got fed. One group prayed for the dumpling shop owner who gave them all they could eat dumplings in exchange for the window washing and he cried because nobody had ever done that for him before. It was so exciting to hear their stories and the kids were so excited because most of them were full-time students and studied ALL the time and had never done anything like that before.

The rest of the camp was more games, team time, etc. Thursday and Friday were workshop days and I was responsible for the Drama Workshop. I was a little apprehensive about this because I wasn't really an expert at Drama or anything (except for a few Sunday School skits), and I hadn't really worked with youth before. I had about 30 kids in my class, so I prepared a couple of icebreakers, and then printed out three stories for them: The good Samaritan; Shadrach Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace; and the Prodigal Son. I divided them into three groups of 10 and gave each a story to prepare a short skit. I told them, be creative! you can modernize it or whatever you wish, but stick to the theme of the story. I went over the stories with each team to make sure they understood the main themes of each story. Then I let them be creative. I was a little apprehensive that maybe their English skills weren't enough that they understood, or if they would be bored...but they FAR exceeded my expectations! These kids were SO creative and their teamwork was absolutely outstanding!

They went to work right away assigning themselves each a team leader who assigned characters, they changed the stories a little bit but stuck to the main messages.. like the team who did the Good Samaritan modernized the story to use characters from Taiwan politics, politicians who hated each other but one helped the other out when he was robbed on the street and beaten and left for dead. The team who did Shadrach Meshach and Abednego I was most worried that they woudldn't understand because it was a pretty long story (I printed in English) but they totally did like a "Veggie Tales" take on it (kind of). Instead of an golden idol they created a "Banana King" who had a "Banana Idol" built and required his banana kingdom to bow down and worship it. But three guys wouldn't worship it and said "Our God is the true God and he created everything, including your bananas! And bananas are meant for eating, not worshipping!" and they started eating bananas and the banana kingdom people who were bowing to Banana Statue were offended and the Banana King threw the three into the fire but the true God rescued them. It was SO much fun to watch them perform and to see that they excersized creativity but completely understood the main message of the story, espescially since most of the kids were not Christians and this was the first time they had ever heard these stories from the Bible. I was so thankful that my workshops went well especially since I was kind of sick last week.

The other workshops went well too, and the last night of camp the message was more of a direct gospel message and although I didn't hear how many kids gave their lives to Christ, many kids went to the front for prayer. So thanks everybody for your prayers and continue praying that there were some seeds planted this week at camp and that the kids who were not saved would be interested in learning more about who Jesus is and what Christianity is all about. Banner church is putting on a big special youth service tonight so hopefully many of the youth from camp will attend that and continue attending youth services on Saturday nights.

So this is a really long post, hopefully didn't bore any of you. :) I start training at Jackson5 next week so I anticipate the business of my schedule picking up quite a bit. I will try to update the blog at least once a week.

Now I am going to go clean my room because it is a pig sty. :)