YFC Camp: Day 1

Being so concerned about food yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised with cottage cheese vereneky (perogies) for breakfast!

The church in the center of the camp:

All of the leadership team got matching t-shirts......buuuuut we were told that they were from a YFC camp 10 years ago and they had just found them in the basement at the YFC office! The symbol on them was a fish with legs which they meant as spreading the gospel but we North Americans laughed about because it was very similar to the evolution symbol! We laughed a lot about it and thought that maybe that's why they were lost in the basement for 10 years!

Waiting for the kids to arrive:

As the kids got out of their bus/vans we formed a big line for them to walk through, gave them candy necklaces and cheered.

Ohhhhh and there were a BILLION star confetti pieces that we had to sweep up later and were finding all week long!

Steve took the kids after the majority of them had arrived and played a quick game with them to keep them occupied until the rest of the kids arrived and it was lunch time.

Demonstrating the game with quite possibly the smallest kid in the entire camp, ha ha:

Lunch was chicken soup (on a +30 day) with hot tea (....on a +30 day.......)

and chicken with noodles. We were really surprised with the portion sizes, that we actually got full off the meal and it was quite tasty.

The sport/game for the afternoon was suggested to us....we thought someone else was running it but they told us their idea and then we had to come up with a game that incorporated it.....but it was finding tinfoil covered pine cones hidden all over the camp because "the Americans brought so much silver with them that it fell out of their pockets all around the camp." Way to solidify stereotypes, ha ha. So the kids needed to bring the pine cones to their base but if they were tagged by an American they had to give up their silver. It was a long, fun game to start the week.

After the game we drove to Zhytomyr to buy supplies for the rest of the games for the week. We tried a few of the other paths around the camp and did some good off-roading with the Niva.

It was an English camp but all of the lessons were about the Bible and in the evening there was always a program that was strictly gospel-based. Skits, worship, and a message. There was always evening snack and small group discussions after the evening program.