Pamoja Pamoja: Together Together: Campaigner Camp: Here we go!

We arrived at the camp and met our work crew. We used all of the Malibu Club t-shirts that were donated as work crew shirts. The kids absolutely loved them. I guess Young Life t-shirts are a hot item with them J There were about 150 kids at camp. They are all high school kids, just like Young Life in the U.S. Doing dishes was not easy, but serving beside my new friends was such a blessing. Hearing their stories, and sharing mine was also an amazing way to see how God works so uniquely in our lives. Other than serving behind the scenes with everything at camp, we were often talking to kids during down time. We were the first Americans most of them had ever met. Ben was talking to me and I saw he was holding a book called “25 bible stories”. I asked him what his favorite was and he said the story of Joseph. We talked about the forgiveness in that story and how it can directly relate to the forgiveness I have seen in Liberia, and how that forgiveness is what will help Liberia to rebuild itself. How incredible to hear that from a 15 year old. Hearing testimonies was one of my favorite parts of camp.

That and dancing. Liberian’s love to dance. I didn’t meet a single one without a sense of rhythm. They seemed to enjoy our zero sense of rhythm though. As in they laughed hysterically every time we tried to dance like them. Oh well haha. The night we got back from camp James told us we could go with him and sit on the street and drink soda. Of course we said yes. We tried to say yes to everything because we’re in Liberia and who knows if drinking soda on the street is more interesting here that in the U.S. Turns out it is. The song Azonto came on (the entire country is crazy about this song right now and we had learned some of the dance moves to it throughout the past week). Of course we jumped up and started dancing the few moves we know. A crowd of 200 Liberians formed watching us. We stopped traffic! I had not seen any white people walking on the streets of Liberia, let alone sitting on the side of the street at night. We tried to break the American stereotype and I believe we did a fantastic job of that this night. Kids were running up to us asking us if we did Young Life. Don’t ask me how they knew, I have no idea. I truly believe though that God was using us that night on the street. Dancing , embracing their culture, laughing with them. What a unique way to show God’s love J

Back to camp though. The last morning of camp I was feeling ill so I missed going to Say-So and the last worship. I guess the kids took initiative with worship and it was one of the most amazing things to witness them all coming together leading their own worship so passionately. Since it was a campaigner camp, most of the kids were already saved. It was designed to strengthen their faith and teach them the basics of living the Christian life and having a relationship with God. However, 4 kids stood up for say so and said they asked Jesus into their lives. They also told us that 3 muslim kids attended the camp that weekend which is huge because the consequences of them leaving their muslim beliefs behind and accepting a relationship with Jesus can result to them being completely disowned by their families. They already have so little, so losing their family's love and support is devastating.
Those 3 days at camp were my favorite of the trip because we had a chance to really get to know people and serve side by side with them. Seeing kids engaging in the sessions and begin to own their faith was inspiring. Being a part of conversations with kids and hearing what God is teaching them was even more incredible.

Professional Organization of Olympic Persons or P.O.O.P! [We later found out they don't use the word poop. They didn't quite understand our humor there haha]