Day 1

Today was our first day of camp, and I think I speak for us all when I say that it went very well.

We had fourteen campers, slightly fewer than we had expected but still a good number for the first day, three of whom have never been to Inspiritus before, which is pretty cool. The campers are mostly older (one 6 year-old, one 7, and every one else older than that). Please pray for even more campers! :)

Because of the rain, we will probably be indoors all week. This means that instead of taking them to the pool and park in the afternoon, we will be doing more games programming. This is fun, but also more work; please pray that we would be able to think creatively and lead enthusiastically regardless. Today we played Inspector Clueless (my second-favourite wide-game) and a few circle games (Fruit Salad, Wink Murderer, etc.). The campers were all really into it throughout, had lots of fun and expended lots of energy, all of which was great! Praise God!

Also, both Jesus Times (*Jesus Time occurs at the very beginning and end of camp every day, and consists of the whole camp getting together to pray and worship God) went very well. The kids were really attentive and seemed really eager to praise God! Yay!

Tomorrow, we will be teaching about God's creation of everything, which should be lots of fun. :)

Also, please remember to pray for our second location at St. Peter's, TMR. They will be starting up next Monday and running for two weeks. I will try to get somebody from that team on the blog ASAP.

Thanks so much for your prayers, guys!

Training Week: A Retrospective

So, training week ended today :( But it was an awesome one, and that just means that camp is getting closer and closer! :D Many helpful workshops, as well as lots of time for prayer and worship, alone and in groups, made it a great week. On a side note, I got my report card, and it doesn't look like I failed the tenth grade, Halelujah!

The number of registered campers has been increasing gradually day after day- we had several visitors throughout the week who came by the location to sign their kids up for camp! And, after getting a brief idea of who all is coming, I'm very excited to work with some brand new campers as well as a lot of familiar faces. Pray that our numbers continue to grow, even after camp starts.

I would like to request prayer regarding some personal matters. Recently, I have had many doubts and questions raised in my head regarding the things around me, and I'm starting to see the lack of permanence in the things we consider "reality". This distresses me somewhat, and I've been losing sleep because of it. At the same time, however, I feel it's a good place for spiritual growth, and it certainly has been a good opportunity for me to spend more time with God this week, which is always a blessing. I have also been hallucinating for the last few weeks. It started with hearing voices calling my name when nobody was around, which I dismissed as wishful thinking, but over the last week I've seen things that weren't there, felt things that were impossible given the situation, and experienced several encouraging visions from the Lord. Pray that this is all a good thing, and that my brain isn't pulling an Eli Stone. The last thing I want is an aneurism :P

Camp starts on monday! Hurray! Keep praying for us! :D

General Prayer Requests

Hi! I'm Josiah, the Leadership Director. I'll be working with the young leaders this summer, mainly at our NDG location. I don't have much to share at the moment, but I thought I should put up some prayer requests concerning the whole camp.

Please pray for:
... more campers! We want to reach as many kids as possible from as many different backgrounds as possible.
... enough money to take any and all campers who can not afford to pay.
... enough money to pay ample salaries and honorariums.

Also, thanks so much to Tina for helping us drive our supplies to our NDG location today!

First!

Hello Everyone!

First, I just want to thank each and every one of you who is out there, sitting at home or in a cafe somewhere, reading our blog. Your support is truly appreciated. :)

I'm Tom Landmaster, a member of the Inspiritus Ministries team. I'm a senior counsellor at our location in beautiful NDG, Montreal, and the head of internet communications. As such, I would like to thank Mathieu "Duke" Leduc for contributing to our cause and setting up a blog for our use.

While our camp does not start until one week from today, we are currently having a special Training Week for the staff. What this involves is all of us coming together, every day of this week, to pray, worship and learn together. We're having wonderful workshops and some really powerful worship sessions. It's a great way to lead up to the summer!

My thoughts on Day One of Training Week:

I'm really encouraged to see the faces in this year's team. We're smaller than we were in past years, with a team of about 15 people. Among them: Two Camp Directors, One Director of Young Leaders, One Artist in Residence, One Artistic Director, One Administrator, Three Senior Counsellors, and the rest (I don't feel like doing math right now) are Young Leaders.
That being said, we have a really good team this year and I'm personally looking forward to spending the summer working with them.

Finally, to make this first blog post an awesome one, I'd like to pray- yes, praying over the internet, I thought it was odd the first time myself -that the matters discussed in this communal blog would be an encouragement to our readers and to the other staff reading eachothers' posts. Lord, I pray all these things in Your precious name, Amen.

And I'd like to encourage all of you- the readers, the staff -to pray as well. We need as much prayer support as we can get! If you're not the praying type, and you just feel like reading our blog, that's also cool! Knowing that there are people who are interested in hearing what's going on is super awesome. Don't worry- it's the internet, we won't know either way :P

So, all this being said, I hope that you'll all have an awesome summer!