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.