Going into this camp, I knew that Terwiliger was obviously a wealthy community. I was interested to see the difference between the kids there compared to the kids at fushion. We headed to the pastor's house for orientation on sunday night where we met all the volunteers. It was the oldest group of volunteers we have had so far. Most of the volunteers were in their 20s and 30s and were school teachers; in fact we were told that Terwiliger community church had a lot of teachers in there. It was interesting and I was a bit unsure of how camp would run with so many teachers. The other alberta team had previously encountered problems working with some teachers at their camps. They had told us that teachers usually want to do their own thing and have their own teaching style and that some of them did not listen to the coaches at all. Luckily for us, the volunteers there were not like that, they were quite awesome. None of them knew how to play soccer though (except for one phys ed teacher), one of them had never even touched a soccer ball until camp!
First day in, we knew it was going to be a big camp. 63 kids had registered, it was the biggest camp we've had so far. The max for a camp is 60 kids for 4 AIA coaches, but we decided that an extra 3 wouldn't really make a difference. We headed to the field in the morning, and to our surprised the grass was disgustingly long. Which once again...meant mosquitoes. The first day went pretty well to my surprise. Most kids listened pretty well and were pretty good in general. It was hard to setup a lot of the stations and games because the grass was so long though. We once again prayed for the grass to be cut. During debrief we found out that during small group time, a kid had told a coach on the U-talk form that he was scared of his dad. We'll call this camper Joe. Joe told the coach that he was scared of his dad because he beats him, and that he didn't want to write it on the form because his dad would beat him even harder if he ever found out. We decided to be careful of how we approached this situation. We didn't want to report anything because we were unsure. The family just recently came from Columbia so it's definitely a different culture there. Well I mean outside of North America, parents from pretty much every other culture beat their kids for disciplinary purposes. The fact could also be that the kid was exaggerating and making it seem a lot worse than it is. And last of all, reporting something like that really tears a family apart. If the dad gets taken away, etc. So we all just decided to observe him and his brothers for the next couple of days before taking any action.
Day 2 we went to the field to see the grass still uncut. But just as we were about to setup, we saw a giant city lawnmower cutting the grass on the field across from us. One of the volunteers went up to him and asked if he could cut ours as well, he agreed and our grass finally got cut before the day started! It was our third time that God had answered our prayers the very next day by cutting the grass. All 3 times were in edmonton (because the city never maintains its field *cough*), once during NEAC, once during fushion, and once at TCC. It was great to see God taking care of the little things for us so that we could focus on the bigger things. During lunch it started raining really hard so we had to take shelter at a nearby gazebo in the park. The plan was to wait the rain out so we could go back outside and play later. However, that was not the case because the rain kept coming down, so we ended up calling parents to the field for pickup and my team and I got off work early that day! Even though we didn't play soccer that afternoon, I felt like that rain had a purpose. We had a boy in our camp called Andrea (pronounced On-dray-ah) who was from Italy and just came 2 weeks ago. He did not speak English at all and we had to communicate to him through hand gestures and so on. He had trouble playing and learning our games because of the language barrier and this was frustrating for us and for him. During that lunch though, Brittany had pulled out her phone and she was able to use the translator on her phone to communicate with him, (luckily he knew how to read and write already). That lunch we were able to find out about his family and his background, and all sorts of cool stuff about him. We built a really strong connection with this kid during that lunch. I also danced with him to Michael Jackson's thriller. Throughout the week whenever he saw me, we would both do a michael jackson pose which was pretty sweet.
Day 3 I had two boys in my group tell me that they wanted to accept Jesus. Usually when I lead a child to do the prayer, I have them repeat after me. But that day I had them pray on their own as I listened in. I felt like that way I would be able to see if they really understood what it meant or what they were actually doing and that they weren't just blindly following whatever I say. Thankfully both of these boys were sincere and they prayed the prayers themselves which was awesome. It was awesome to see the change of heart in a span of few days in one of the boys. His name was Jacob and I remember when he had told me he wanted to accept Jesus, I was quite surprised. He was often quite disruptive and a troublemaker, he was also really mean to some of the younger kids. After he had prayed, I told him that now that he has Jesus in his heart, he had to be nicer to people. He looked at me really seriously and nodded. From that moment on I don't think a single coach or volunteer had to lecture him or pull him aside for the rest of camp. It was just amazing to see how much of an impact that it had on him, and it was definitely good to see that he was taking it seriously.
Day 4 I don't remember anything from this day.
Day 5
Everything went by pretty quickly, the day was pretty smooth. In the afternoon world cup, a lot of parents showed up to watch their kids play which was good. We noticed that Joe ran over to his dad to hug him and greet him when he came which was a good sign. It's not very likely that a kid would be that excited to see his dad if he was that abusive, nor would it be very likely that the dad would even show up to support his kid. Throughout the week our volunteers haven't reported any signs of abuse like marks or anything so we felt a little bit relieved. In the end the church coordinator decided that we wouldn't report anything but that they would tell the teacher at his school to keep a look out for it. Everyone had to leave quickly after, Lane had a 9 hour drive to regina for a wedding, Kaitlyn had to go to a wedding as well, and Brittany had to head home to get ready for her grandma's interment. Busy and tiring weekend for my whole team, except for me!
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