Week. Three. Complete.
It's been a couple of weeks since I posted last (Read my previous entry here), and those have been a crazy couple of weeks. Three camps have been completed, and they were nothing like I expected them to be, each with their own unique situations and circumstances. We've had great opportunities to connect with churches and communities wherever we have gone.
Our first week was in Nanaimo with First Baptist Church, and it was a camp of right around 100 kids. There were fires just north of Nanaimo while we were there, which caused a bit of a problem with the air quality. We prayed about it Sunday night, and Monday morning, and thankfully a bit of wind came Monday, and the sky was cleared up pretty quickly. The weather was hot all week, and we had a great field to work with. We had a huge number of volunteers from the church, which was sweet. They were super capable and willing to take on leadership roles, and so there was a lot of opportunity for them to grow as leaders and coaches. We also had a few coaches from an AIA Touring Team join us for the week. We didn't have a ton of time to get them up to speed, but they did fantastically well with all the info we gave them, and were remarkably adaptable and immeasurably helpful. Our days ran reasonably smoothly, but there were some bugs we were sorting out, what with it being our first week. Overall the camp went pretty great. The kids had a great week, and there was tonnes of opportunity to share the gospel to kids who had never heard it, and plenty of changes to help grow the kids who had already heard it. The church we were with was really pleased with how the week went, and got a lot of positive feedback from parents and kids alike. It was a really great way to officially kick the summer off.
From Nanaimo, we went to Northview Community Church in Abbotsford, my home church. This summer marked the fifth time I had helped out at the soccer camp there, and it was bigger than it had ever been. We ended up having 120 kids registered, which is the biggest camp I've ever done. We had to do some adapting, to try and meet the kids at their skill level so that they could be challenged, and to help them to grow as much as they could. We split the camp into three different camps, which is something I've never done before. Two camps is semi usual, but three is unheard of. It ended up working out quite well, because of the quality of volunteers we had, and the quality of coaches too. We had a few extra coaches with us, as one of the tour girls stayed on for an extra week, and we had a new coach do his first week of the summer. They brought much needed experience and energy, and it was a real help to have them with us. This camp is a partnership between the church, AIA, and the Abbotsford Food Bank, which is a really cool situation to be a part of. A lot of the kids who I've known for a few years now come from tough backgrounds, and may have broken and hurting families, and so they come to camp really needing love and attention. This isn't a particularly skilled camp, but it is one of my favourite ones I've ever been a part of. We have to be constantly investing in the kids, which is very emotionally and physically draining, but seeing the kids change even over the course of a week is really cool. And being able to see these kids year after year is a lot of fun too.
The last camp we've done so far is in Langley, with Northwest Baptist Church. It was a pretty massive adjustment to go from Northview to this camp, because there were only 30 kids registered, so about a quarter of the size of the camp we had just finished. We had a couple of new coaches join us, and they did remarkably well. As far as first weeks of camp go, they were outstanding. They welcomed opportunities to lead, and picked up on areas where they could help, and really acted as though they had already done years of soccer camps. And what this camp lacked in size, it made up for in entertaining kids. There were so many kids who were ridiculously hilarious that we seriously considered making a list of all the crazy things that were said. One kid brought a Kermit the Frog puppet and entertained over half of the camp at every lunch break. We had a bit of an adjustment period, going from having no time the previous week to stop and rest during the day, to having plenty of time to hang out with kids and make sure that they were all getting the love and attention that they needed. But by Tuesday of the week, we had made the adjustments we had to, and camp ran smoothly from that day on. Thankfully the field we were at had a gym we could use if the weather got bad, because it did. It rained pretty hard late Thursday night and all of Friday, so we wet inside the gym for the day. It was definitely a more chaotic day because of it, but it was a really rewarding day too, and the kids had a lot of fun. We had to dry and run group games in a compressed area, but it ended up being far smoother than I had originally thought it would.
For those of my readers (that sounds rather pretentious, but I can't come up with a better way to say it) who are wondering, this is the halfway point of my summer. We've got three camps left, and then I have a couple of weeks before I go to Columbia Bible College in September. It's going by so quickly, and I camp believe I've only got three weeks left with my team. I'm looking forward for more opportunities to show kids the love we find in Christ and what he's done for us, and I can't thank the coaches I've worked with enough for teaching me so much and helping me to grow as a coach.
Thanks for reading, if you've stuck with me this whole way, you've read four paragraphs of my musings. Thanks for taking the time to catch up with me. As always, email me anything you might be wondering of want to say, at levi.friesen.17@gmail.com, and I'll be forever grateful to know that there are actually people out there who read all this stuff that I write. I'm having fun, God is good, and each day if a blessing and an opportunity. Thanks for reading!
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