Content May be a Little Difficult to Read

It funny how camp usually brings about a of mix emotions… this one was an extremely good week but also a really hard, draining week at the same time…

First of all one of the teen girls that I have been discipling for the past four years was headed off to Mexico on the 28th for her missions school, the first day of camp.  I was unable to see her off because, well because it was the first day of camp, but a friend and a co-worker who has known her for YEARS, saw her off for me.  They called me from the airport, we said our good bye’s and off she went.  I get a call the next day from same friend…. expecting to hear that she got there safely but only to be told that they wouldn’t let her into Mexico and she was on her way back, she couldn’t prove that she had enough money to stay there until November when her school would end.  I was worried about her and how she would be feeling.  She called me when she got back to Bogota and she was completely at peace, a little tired, but at peace.  I was astounded and proud at how much she has grown and how strong her faith was.  She new that despite what may look like uncontrollable circumstances that God was indeed in control.  She is now in Pereira, a small city in the coffee region of Colombia, doing her mission school.

Second of all, I think this is the most delicate and difficult situation we have had to deal with at camp.  As I was thinking of writing this blog, I was thinking of how to sugar coat this situation but then I decided not to sugar coat this situation at all because this is reality.  While this situation has never come up at camp before, this situation is not unique with the population of children we work with… so just a warning that this next part of the blog isn’t very pretty and if you are of younger audience, maybe get a parents approval before you read on.

We got a call on Thursday morning from an aunt of one of the girls that her mother had been killed.  Apparently she had some involvement with drugs and was MIA since that Monday and her sister found her in the morgue with her throat slit, she was also four months pregnant.  Her aunt was saying that whatever we did don’t let her got to her step-father (her father has been in prison for the past six years) and her step-father was telling us to make sure that we gave her to him…a little bit of a sticky situation, but because the step-father wasn’t blood family, legally we had to turn her over to her aunt.  We also felt that it wasn’t our responsibility to break the news to her but we had to be very careful as we have parents calling the children and because of the rumour mill of children that come from that same neighbourhood, we had to tell parents not to say anything to their children.  This little girl is from the coast and her aunt was doing all the paper work necessary to take the body back to the coast but the plan was to travel Thursday night to the coast.  So this little girl (only 12 years old) and another staff member headed back to Bogota.  Please pray for this little girl, her aunt is the only family she has, but her aunt has two more children and isn’t sure she can bear the financial responsibility of taking on another mouth to feed.  They are still in the coast and we should know more when they get back in a few days as to what life will look like for this little girl.

All that out of the way, I am always surprised at how even in their very little time here on earth, how these  girls are just filled with lies about their worth and what they will amount to.  So when we start to fill them with truth of who they are and just how much they are loved and of worth and what their heavenly Father thinks of them, the just begin to crumble and all these walls around their heart begin to crash down.  

The speaker did this really neat thing (I will post a picture because I know I won’t explain it right), where we had up on the wall truths about who they were and then with the projector and the camera from my computer we had their face projected around these truths.  It was truly a beautiful thing.

So while this was an emotionally difficult one again, these girls left knowing who they are in Christ and just how much they are worth and how much they are loved.  Let’s pray that these truths stick and take root and grow in their hearts and that they would indeed grow up to be the women that God intends for them to be.

Next camp August 20-21st-boys 8-10

Thanks so much

Ingie