Week 4 Coaldale

The week in Coaldale was a tough one for me. It was our halfway point and it was another full camp with 60 kids. At that point my energy level was pretty low heading into that week. I was also dealing with an injured coach on my team last week from whitecourt. To make matters worse, 5 minutes before starting camp on the first day, Aimee sprained her ankle really badly. We spent a few days driving her back and forth to the emergency and the hospital for x-rays and consultation. Fortunately the volunteers at Coaldale had quite a bit of experience with these camps and were able to fill in. Honestly I can say that week was the hardest for me to wake up and go to camp. I had a few sleepless nights because of stress and personal issues.  A bright spot for me throughout all the craziness was dinner each night. We got sent to different homes every night to meet people from the church. Got to meet lots of interesting people! Overall Coaldale was a solid camp, we had 2 healthy coaches for 60 kids but the volunteers helped lighten the load. It was a tough week, but our team managed to pull through it!

Week 3 Whitecourt

This was our first real test as a team for the summer. There were 74 campers all week. I had to make lots of adjustments throughout the week because of the size of camp. Despite the size, it was a fantastic week of camp. We had great volunteers and everything was well organized and planned out on the church's part. It was awesome to see a lot of returning volunteers from last year. They remembered me really fondly and were really excited to have me back! They even showed me a slideshow they made of all the pictures from last year and some coaches showed me videos of me juggling from last year. It was awesome hearing all their stories about how soccer camp has affected their community and church growth.  It was a good week filled with some awesome stories. For example, the church didn't have a backup facility booked because everything was full. That meant if it rained, we wouldn't have anywhere to go, and couldn't run camp. On Thursday morning.. I was woken up by thunder and heavy raining. I was panicking because we didn't have a backup facility. BUT somehow, the coordinator/pastor managed to book 8 FULL HOURS at the local recreation centre (which had an indoor soccer arena) one hour before camp started! What a miracle, I really couldn't believe it! Praise the Lord! Whitecourt was an awesome week but it wasn't all great news. On thursday night we had a volunteer verse coach's game, Ben (one of my teammates) ended up tearing a part of his ligament in his ankle while playing. He was unable to move and was on crutches the next day. Friday was a bit of a challenge but we pulled through, luckily Ben had a brace for it (because it was a reoccuring injury) Please pray for his recovery.

Week 2 greenfield

The week at greenfield, we had around 26 kids. Camps ran a bit better in the sense that my team was finally starting to pick up the slack a little. It was great week. It was the first time Greenfield had done soccer camps but I think the church really enjoyed it. Camp was pretty good most of the week with the exception of some of the drama happening with the older kids. (although we did see improvement as the week went on) One of the highlights in this camp was seeing kids from other soccer camps. Some kids that I had coached in Camrose or in Terwiliger camp in previous years were also in this camp! It was such a pleasant surprise and it was heart warming that they remembered me so fondly. It was nice to have the opportunity to continue to build the relationships that I had started in previous years. There was also a girl who was a camper last year in Terwiliger, who became a volunteer this year. I really enjoyed being her coach in previous years, and it was nice to see that she was inspired to volunteer. I was able to connect with her and show her the ropes a bit during the week. It was encouraging to know that our camps make big impacts on the lives of campers and volunteers! Our boss always tells us that our goal with this AIA ministry is to be spiritual multipliers. Meaning that we should be inspiring believers who will inspire more. Our goal is to not only do camps at churches and leave but to inspire campers and volunteers to serve God, whether thats through AIA or with anything else. To train and build into the lives of the volunteers and campers so that we can bring up the next generation of believers. And when I saw that camper who was inspired to volunteer, it gave me great encouragement to know that what God has been doing through me in the past few summers has had a great impact!

Week 1 NEAC

This was the first week of camps for me as a head coach but the reality of it hadn't really sunken in yet. I was excited but also nervous. I had and still have a young and inexperienced team with me. It was the first week of camp for a couple of the coaches on my team. However, we had a small camp and had almost a 1 to 1 ratio with the volunteers. There were pros and cons to that. A big con is that there wasn't as much energy from the kids which makes it harder for them to get excited. On top of that, the skill level of the kids at our camp was quite low, it didn't create much competition between the kids. On the bright side it gave the rookie coaches on my team an opportunity to ease into their roles. It was a pretty easy camp to run with so little kids and so many volunteers.

Personally for me, it was an exhausting week. I found myself having to do most of the work or redoing or reteaching a lot of the stuff the other coaches were doing. It's all part of the learning experience for the rookies and the forming of a young team though. Hopefully they learn quickly and we start becoming more efficient. I did enjoy seeing a lot of kids from church at soccer camp though. It was cool for us to interact in another setting outside of church. I was able to challenge a few of them in what they believed in. At the end of the week I had 2 kids in my small group, (1 from our church) come up to me and ask me for the Bible because they really wanted to read more. It'll be great because I can follow up with one of them during AWANA.

Overall it was a good week. First weeks are always a little rougher because of the new team dynamics. I'm confident that things will get better in the next few weeks though.

Week 8 Westlock

So before Bev left our team last week, she had told me that I would take over the head coach position for the last week of camp. So right off the bat I tried to get in contact with the pastor who was the coordinator for the camp as well. I did not get a response for a looong time, so on saturday I texted Bev asking what I should do. She gave me the email of another pastor at the church and so I tried to get a hold of him. I didn't get a response until saturday at midnight, and we only got to email each other back and forth a few times on sunday. So already...not a very good start. They didn't let me know how many campers they had, how many volunteers, whether they got the coach's corner material. They only told me they wanted to meet at 6:30.

So on sunday night we finally get there, and they have a few volunteers from last year. We needed someone to replace Kim as Esther in our skit because she was gone, but they said they didn't even get the coach's corner material yet even though Katie said she emailed it to them last month. I asked if they had the u-talk forms, the little information forms that give us a background on the kids faith and their family. They had not printed those either. So there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done. On a brighter note, there were almost 40 kids this year which was much better than last year when they had like 12.

After going to the billets house, I had to start making teams and assigning roles for the week because Kim wasn't there. The week ran surprisingly well, considering nothing was really done. There was a lot more responsibility as head coach, I had to keep the whole day running while dealing with all the original stuff I had to do. Each day after camp I was more exhausted than the day before. I think it was a combination of trying to stay on top of all my new responsibilities, as well as it being the last week, as well as only having 2 other coaches to work with.

Somehow I made it through the week, somehow. It was probably one of the most tiring week of camp I've ever experienced. But it was good, and a great learning experience. A more experienced AIA coach once said after a summer, that being head coach made him a better servant. And that was definitely true for me as well, I realized that so many things needed to be done and there were so many things that I had to do and I didn't even realize it. I was glad I did it this week, after all, I'm supposed to be head coach the next time I coach. Says my boss anyway haha.

Week 7 Terwiliger

This was a camp I went to last summer and I was pretty excited to be heading back. I missed volunteer orientation because of a wedding, so I didn't get to see who was volunteering until that morning. I knew that it was still the same pastor from last summer who was organizing it though, so I knew that the camp was going to be well setup and organized. On the first day of camp I recognized a few volunteers from last year, and even new volunteers who were campers last year, so that was really cool. Although the camp was slightly smaller this year compared to last year, lots of the same kids from last year came back. I was pleasantly surprised to have so many campers from last summer come up to me and say hi. One little boy told me all summer he was hoping more than anything that I would be at this camp!

The week ran really really well, the church had an amazing setup with tents, snacks, bathrooms, and even in getting volunteers. We also had a volunteer who had helped out for the past 4 soccer camps in terwiliger and told me that he wanted to be a coach next year. So my team and I had a lot of fun "training" him which involves making him doing everything. Just kidding not really haha. I think there were a lot of times when he felt uncomfortable doing something and he asked "really? I have to do this?" But in the end he would do it, and I think he learned a lot and got some good experience out of it. I think that if you ever want to be better at anything, and that includes being a better servant for God, you need to be challenged. I think back to my volunteering experiences at my own church and how I was challenged. If I was never challenged by the coaches to lead a devotion, to run a station, to lead a small group, I never would have had those opportunities to grow. During those times I was asked to do those things, I definitely felt nervous and uncomfortable. But if I was never challenged as a volunteer, I don't think I would be working with AIA right now.

It was an interesting week in regards to where we went after camp ended. The pastor had arranged for us to have supper at different people's houses every night. We would go to some of the camper's houses, some of the volunteers or people from the church. It was really cool to have supper in some of the homes that God was working in through the soccer camp.

It was a pretty emotional end of the week after camp ended. It was Kim's last week of camp with us, she had to go to school early to get settled in. Our whole team was very grateful for what she had brought to the team and we would definitely miss her for the last week of camp! Also saying goodbye to the kids was pretty sad, I connected really well with almost all the kids at camp that week. I dont remember being that close with the kids last summer at this camp! But I definitely will miss them.

Week 6 Calgary

Going into this week, my team and I knew it was going to be a small camp. Although the church we were partnering with had around 900 people in their congregation, they had less than 30 kids registered. Not only that but no one in that 900 congregation was willing to billet to my team so we all stayed at Katie's place which was pretty far from the field. Upon arriving, we knew that this camp was going to be a bit of work even with so little kids. The church hadn't really put much work into the camp, and didn't have very many things prepared, in fact the coordinator was on vacation and not even at camp.


We only had a few volunteers but they were really good for the most part. The camp ran really well too, the challenge I usually find with smaller camps is there's a lack of energy. Kids feed off each others energy, so when there are a lot of kids, camps are usually more exciting. Having said that, this camp was pretty good, the kids really got into the stuff we were doing. Small groups went great too, it was nice having some volunteers that week that actually participated in the small groups. We had a few kids in the group that decided they want to be on God's team and thats always really exciting. Overall the week went great, I think the volunteers were really happy with how the camp went and they wanted to do it again, hopefully they'll have another camp in the future with more kids.