Polska Part 3 - The Beginning

In spite of all my apprehensions, Sunday finally arrived. We started the day off with the regular service at the church, and my first time playing an entirely Polish worship set (not to mention it was also my first time playing an entire worship set on mandolin). Not a lot of Poles have ever even heard of mandolin, being a more American folk instrument, so I think it was a lot of fun for them to see it. It was certainly fun for me!

Once the service was over, we hurriedly cleaned and prepped our classrooms, then anxiously awaited the campers. As the arrived and registered, they were taken back to an oral English exam for class placement. Once finished with that, they came out to us to play some icebreaker games. We had to keep adjusting since there were constantly new people joining us.

Large groups of new people is usually a situation I avoid. Being an introvert, I generally prefer talking to one or two people at a time, and I tend to take a long time to warm up to them and show any trace of the crazier sides of my personality. But camp is different. Especially when you're a leader at said camp. If you're going to get these students (who are probably also apprehensive about being around so many new people) excited about anything, you have to be EXCITED. I was thus flung completely out of my comfort zone, and I'm so glad for it.

Once everyone had gone through the oral exam, the color teams were established. Nancy, Filip (our tech guy, nicknamed FiFi WiFi), and I were designated Red Team leaders. We all broke off into our teams with the task of designing our team banner and coming up with our team cheer. Our team decided we would be the Awesome Red...Apples. I said, "So...just so we're clear - you guys are going to be cheering for this when we do sports and everything. You want to be cheering for the Awesome Red Apples?" In reply, a resounding "YEEEAAAAHHH!!!" Ok then! Sweet!

Our cheer:
What are we??
-AWESOME!!!!
What color are we???
-RED!!!!
WHAT DOES THAT MAKE US?!?!?!
-AWESOME. RED. APPLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we were glorious.

After that, we ran the first Evening Program. The theme of this year's camp was "Did You Get My Message?" centering around social media. The Evening Program began with ice breakers and announcements, then Tracie and I taught the first half of the camp dance to Lecrae's "Calling all the Messengers." It went pretty okay in spite of the whiteness of my dancing. But we were in Poland so...

The Evening Program is where the evangelistic element of the camp mainly comes through. After the dance, Tracie, Adam, and I led a couple worship songs in English, which was also crazy fun. They're both extremely talented people. Then, the whole thing wrapped up with Kelly's testimony and the campers were dismissed home.

It had already been a very long day, and it wasn't even a full day of camp. I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through an entire week, but I was excited. A few of us went out to dinner in Market Square in Piotrków. I accidentally ate some salmon and my throat started to swell, but I took some benadryl and I was fine. But I completely crashed when we finally got back to the hotel.



The first full day of camp was a doozy. There were still a few kinks that needed to be worked out in the staff meeting beforehand, but we got through it. After a few morning announcements, we started English classes. Peggy and I were in charge of the Beginning class, with Naomi serving as our translator. The curriculum was provided by JosiahVenture, but was a little confusing and unclear in places. Peggy had done a lot of preparation, but there were still some things that it had us doing that then didn't have an activity to go with it, and the kids seemed pretty bored. But they weren't talking. Because they weren't talking, we initially assumed that they were at a lower level than many of them were actually at. However, Naomi talked to a few of them during the break, so we adjusted the activities for the second half of class, and they opened up a lot more, we got them talking and using their English, and they seemed to be much more engaged.



After English lessons were sports! The first couple days, we had bubble balls. They're these intense inflatable balls that you crawl inside and support with your shoulders. Then you run around, get knocked over, and sweat a lot. It's crazy fun, but exhausting and it bruises your shoulders. We played football (soccer, aka REAL football), and I was actually better at it than I thought I would be!

 

The Evening Program ended up basically being the Tracie and Ellie show. We taught the rest of the camp dance and were supposed to lead worship, but Ron's testimony took more time than expected, which was fine because it was really powerful. Then, Tracie and I gave the evening talk, all about creation and the fall and what it meant when sin entered the world.



I gave my first sermon. In Poland. With a translator. Booyah.

I was actually really surprised at how not-nervous I was. I got a little flustered towards the end, but other than that it went really smoothly and I wasn't shaking at all!

After the campers went home, the older girls and I went out to the mall for ice cream and then McDonald's with Adam and Łukasz. It was great just hanging out and not having to talk about anything camp-related for a little bit. They're all just fantastic people, and have become some of my dearest friends.