Session 2, Day 1

Yay!

We had 27 campers today, and are expecting I think at least 2 more campers sometime this week, bringing us to about the same number of campers as last session. In past years, the construction holidays have meant that we have considerably fewer campers in the 2nd session, but we continue to have many campers inviting their friends, Christian and otherwise, to camp, which is very cool.

Marco and Cara, the Session 1 junior staff, are no longer with us, but David and Micah have returned as junior staff this session and Maria has begun her first session of Inspiritus as staff. Kelly, who has been at our St. Peter's, TMR location for the past two weeks has returned to 'DG after that camp ended (and went really well, even though nobody blogged about it). We also have Kim and, I think, Thierno (whose name I am spelling correctly this time) returning as volunteers, and had a surprise visit from Mike, who will probably be returning next Tuesday as a guest artist! For those who do not know him, Mike is a professional trumpet player (with MSO, last time I knew) and is a veteran Inspiritus staff-person. He has a very cool story about how God gave him his very great talent and a trumpet when he was a kid, and I am really looking forward to him sharing it and his music with the kids!


I realize that I have been a bit general with prayer requests so far, so, in addition to praying for us all in general, here are some specific things to pray about:

- One young camper is very afraid to play games of any sort with the rest of the group. Please pray that she would feel comfortable with the group and want to have fun with us.

- Please pray that God would bless communication between staff and campers and between campers and campers. Some of the staff are not very comfortable in French, one volunteer is not very comfortable in English, and a sizeable minority of the kids are unilingual one way or the other.

- Jesus Time! There have been a few very dramatic things and, I believe, many more subtle things, happen in the hearts of individual campers during Jesus Time; please pray for more of both. Please pray that God would give each of the kids an increased desire to worship him! Please pray that we staff would have wisdom in our leading of the Jesus Times and know how to invite the kids to respond to God in ways that will reach them where they are at.

- This week's small group lessons are about Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well and the stories of Rahab and Ruth. Please pray that God would use these stories to impress on the kids the idea of his acceptance of people of all nations and backgrounds.

Also, I'd like to ask personally for prayer as I have been feeling a bit sick (small head and stomach aches) and very exhausted for quite some time. Renewed strength would be great, whether or not in the form of a day off. ;)

Thank you guys so much!