Sometimes Life's So Bittersweet

Well today was the day that we officially headed off to our various sites to begin setting up and preparing for camps. This week is called "travel week" and most of the crews get to their locations about Wednesday and begin setting up in order to be fully prepared for starting the first camp on Sunday afternoon. However, since my location is 40 minutes from the training site, my partner and I get to hang at a friend's house with one other crew for the week - how fun!

Some of the going-on's from the rest of training:

1. We learned some AMAZING things about the theme for Workcamps this year: Reveal. Each day there is a daily theme and the 4 themes they've chosen to focus on are Release for the Captives, Sight for the Blind, Freedom from Oppression, and Revealing the Lord's Favor. We have one night where we have the kids ziptie their wrists together and go look at different prayer stations (Money, Technology, Relationships, Self-Image, Sports, Food) and reflect on what of those things might be holding them captive and then they come to a cross on stage to pray and have their ziptie cut, an amazing and tangible picture of how Christ sets us free!

2. I have made some wonderful friendships here (including my partner Madisynne on the L) and it's hard to want to set out on my own when I've built up such a great support group here :) This week the program coordinators had a lot of position specific training and during one day of training we found these 3 boxes of suction blow dart guns...well we couldn't let those go to waste could we? So we launched an attack on other groups working on training and had quite the focus during the times we weren't playing around!

3. I got our crew minivan which is beautiful and has been named "The Tub." It's practically brand new and boy have I learned how to pack one of those things up like a jig saw puzzle.

God has definitely set me up for a challenge this summer. Between being with one person all summer, dealing with little sleep and crazy days, and finding a balance of it all, the end of training has left me with a mixture of readiness and yet hesitance, but I know that this is where He wants me and I'm excited to start writing about experiences at camps - keep reading :) I'll try to update as regularly as possible - prayers are appreciated!

-kristawithHOPE