June was an exciting month for me for a few reasons. We had basketball camp on June 25th, and my husband's brother Charles came over to help coach basketball camp(Charles is the tall guy on the right). At this point, I had not seen my husband for 3 weeks, and so hugging Charles was the next best thing! Charles was the first member of my husband's family to see the ministry, and I had a lot of fun watching him have an amazing time.I really enjoy sports camp. I am not much of an athlete myself...as a matter of fact, I want to share a little story with you. When I came down to 2005 on a construction trip, we played softball. Now I know that I am not an athlete, but I was cajoled into playing, and so since I didn't want to be a party pooper...I played. It was a hot day, and it was the American's verses the Dominican's. The Dominican's are a lot of fun, but anything involving a ball and bat is serious business. So the bases are loaded, we really needed a run, I hit the ball and took off for first base! SO, did I mention that I am not a graceful runner either? I was so entertaining playing this game that the Dominican's gave me their team ball and everyone signed it. I tried to find the picture of me running in this game that my Jen took (my co worker with GO) but
I must have lost it alo
ng the years!
On a more serious note..we really had a great week. This was the first time we had a All Sports camp week. There was volleyball, baseball, aerobics, and basketball all going on at the same time! We'd meet every morning at the same court for chapel, break up into teams for training sessions, have memory verse sessions, and then in the afternoon they play games against each other. I was involved in the memory verse sessions, and it was a lot of fun. It was interesting to see how many of the campers were Christians. I had fun sharing with them funny stories from my child hood in church and I encouraged them to share with me as well. My role foremost is first aid nurse. There is always lots of scrapes, but this is the first year that we had to give stitches. Those kids were tough. I remember holding their hands, and telling them not to look, and helping them take nice deep breathes! I really enjoyed cuddling and loving on these kids! Since my job is facilitating the teams, the team members are usually the ones who get to do all the loving on them...but as we all know..there is nothing better that snuggling with a child on your lap. Especially these little kids. They look forward to seeing the "Americanos" coming because they know for a little while they are going to get somebodies undivided attention. It's not that their parents don't love them. Most of these communities are single moms who have 3 or more kids to take care of. If they are lucky, the dads are away working and sending money home. More often than not though, the dads are either strung out on drugs, alcoholics, or have just abandoned them.
We hosted another medical clinic July 8th, they were a brand new church(Pathways) from Fort Wayne, Indiana. That week was a pretty special week for us. Not only did we have a medical clinic, but we also had a special clinic for the hearing impaired. As a lot of you know, we have a couple who works with GO that their twin girls were born profoundly deaf. Jeff and Vickie were flying in for a visit anyway, so they came early to be a part of this clinic. We had two audiologists there with us. They spent the week having hearing screenings and fitting children and adults who were either hearing impaired or completely deaf. People brought their children from all over Santiago to have their hearing tested. There are really no words to describe the look on a childs face when he hears sounds for the first time! Most of these kids were around the age of 8 years old...and hearing sound for the first time....I just can't imagine it. We saw about 650 people in the medical clinic that week, about 65 were screened for hearing issues, and 20 recieved hearing aides.
I am amazed at how huge God is. How He pays attention to all the details, just how faithful He always is. My prayer is that as we are working to build relationships to spread the gospel of Christ, that the people we are ministering to...see His reflection in our lives. It is the sole reason that we do what we do. As I look back over the summer, I hope that I did a good job. I hope that as I played with the kids, cleaned wounds, and worked with the teams...in everything I did....I did for the Glory of God. It's a hard task to accomplish everyday. There are days when I am really proud of myself. Then there are days when you just want it to be all about yourself, and I wonder when I am going to get it right! On those days I think of the scripture in Malachi 3:3, "He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify sunshine, refining her like gold and silver, so that she may once again be a acceptable sacrifice to the Lord."
