SPORTA DIENAS - YOUTH CELEBRATIONS (Day 1 & 2)

All of our team arrived on Saturday and spent the Sunday worshipping at Cesis Baptist Church and planning the week's activities.

Monday morning was an early start with the beginning of Junior Camp (ages 8-12, roughly). We had a fair number but the first days are always a little slower. Our coaches did a good job of learning their roles, adjusting and getting to know the kids.

From 2-4pm the entire group was with VBS. Everything had to be moved inside because of the rain but for a first time adventure, it was really good. Our helpers from Latvia have never attended a VBS before so it sometimes seems that teachers and students are both learning as we go.

Back to the Sports Halle for the afternoon basketball sessions with our older kids (13-19), our US kids were beginning to feel the jet lag, culture shock, and just physical tiredness. They did a good job and since these were kids their own age and quickly began to form some friendships.

Youth Celebration finished the first day's activities. From 7:00pm to 8:30, the Cesis youth and young adults had games, Blake provided the music and Pastor Olegs gave a short message. We treated the crowd to saldejums (ice cream) to wrap up the night's activities. Again, the rain slowed us down a little, but everything went well.

 

Day 2- Tuesday  - As usual, every activity increased in speed and number of participants. The younger camp almost doubled in number, with probably 60 kids there. As they begin to learn the drills and procedures, things run smoother and we can get more accomplished.

VBS went well as everyone now has a clear idea of what we are trying to accomplish.

The biggest increase was in our older camp. We sometimes lose them between the end of camp and waiting for the Youth Celebrations to begin. We really wanted them to stay to hear Pastor Samuels speak. The kids brainstormed some ideas on how to keep the teen-agers all there. It worked beautifully and we had almost 100% of the older kids to stay.

Sams did a great job of entertaining with some simple stories (the eagle and the chicken) and then relating that to the Christian life. Several of the students stayed around and talked with him and some of our other counselors. We feel that some life-changing decisions were made in that service.

Afterwards we invited the older teenagers to come eat pizza with us. By the time we had walked there, we had over 40 kids. It was great watching the two groups come together and began talking about their life as young people in two different cultures. It helped ease our U.S. group more into feeling like they are being accepted and it helped the Latvians to see that the other teenagers are just like them.

We thank God for a great day and we are looking forward to the last two days of camp and what will come out of those efforts. We will wrap the camp portion of the week on Thursday night with a big concert in Castle Park. Man-hu is the music group from Riga. You can hear some of their music here: www.manhu.lv

Labi cau!

[These pictures are from the pizza gathering.]