To Russia with Love...: English Camp 2012

The past couple of weeks have been crazy. Layna and I spent two weeks in Moldova waiting for our visas to get approved and mailed back to us in time for English camp. We knew we would be cutting it close but in our original estimation we thought we would only have to wait about a week and a half for our visas and would be back in plenty of time for camp. Well that wasn't the case. Since we had to mail them back to the states for different reasons it took a couple days for shipping. We were thrilled to hear that the visas had been approved and that they were being shipped back. Upon looking at the tracking information we saw that our passports wouldn't get back to us until Wednesday July 7. That meant that they would reach us after camp started. But the Lord provided and we got our passports earlier. They arrived Monday in the mail and after frantically texting our supervisor and checking flights, we booked a flight back to Perm the same day. We packed our bags and within a few hours of receiving our passports we were on a plane. We arrived back in Perm on Tuesday morning at 5 am. We caught a taxi back to our apartment, quickly repacked, showered and caught a quick nap and then left our apartment at 9:30 am Tuesday. We were running on little sleep. We met the group of campers and the team from Texas (this team consisted of two families and three other volunteers) at the local church and loaded the bus and headed for camp. There were about 50 people in all. The campers ranged in ages from 15-36.

We had a great time at camp. We all taught classes on America (history, traditions/holidays, idioms, sports, superstitions, etc) and spoke lots of english. The team from Texas introduced the campers to different American food in a cooking class. That seemed to be the favorite class.

Learning how to make BBQ chicken sandwiches

Icing the 4th of July cupcakes that they learned to make

Some campers and Layna posing for the camera.
Tanya, Lena, Rasheed, Layna, and Kostya

Day 2: Learning how to make chicken Enchiladas

A lot of our time was spent talking over tea or sitting on the dock and talking and hanging out playing games or swimming in the river. We got to know the campers and just talk to them and hear about their lives and share about our lives and faith. Each night we sang camp songs and songs that I remember singing in sunday school and then would listen to a short topic. On the last night we had a talent show and the campers seemed to really enjoy it. Overall it was a great time and we all had fun.

Two of our Camper preforming a skit with two members of the Texas Team.

Debbie and Dave preforming "Green Eggs and Ham"

Sonya and Elizabeth preforming a song.

It was great getting to work with this team from Texas. There church has been partnered with us for many years and they continue to come back and work with us. We were able to meet some great people and it is our prayer that we will be able to continue to get to know some of these girls during our time here. There have been some that have expressed interest in reading the Bible. Pray for the campers and that they would seek the Lord and would be willing to meet with us to read the Bible and learn more.