Summer English Camp

In late June we traveled to the northern region of the country to help some friends of ours with a children's English camp. It was wonderful to get out of the big city for a few days, enjoy our friends' hospitality, and meet some new people.

The camp we helped with was one of several that our coworkers have organized over the summer. With each camp that they have held, the turnout continues to grow as more families hear about this opportunity for their children.

Each morning we divided into four classes and spent time learning vocabulary and simple phrases. Kevin, Sean and Julie were in charge of the mid-morning snack break. Each day's session ended with a large group review and relay races that required each child to answer a question in English before they could run back and tag the next runner.


It has also been a great chance for our coworkers to build more relationships with people in their community. Pray that they would be able to follow up on some of the friendships they have developed. Pray also that we would be able to develop similar camps for other cities in the interior next summer.

As with any group of children in any culture, country, or economic class, some of our students were "difficult" while others were absolute sweethearts. The little girl in this photo was one of my favorites.

This was a working vacation for us, so we did get to enjoy some rest and recreation while we were there. Being from Florida, I have to admit that the beaches here are not quite the sugar white sands that I grew up with, but this beach is much cleaner than anything in our city! And our friends told us that this was a bad day. . .We were just pleased that there was no oil slick on the water's surface.

We also had a "Pajama Jam Party" organized by our friends' young daughters, and it was a blast! All the little girls bobbed for apples, and as you can see Hannah Grace had a little help from her friends.


There was also a very competitive game of "Red Light, Green Light". We played many rounds to allow everyone the opportunity to be the traffic light. Pictures of Musical Chairs will not be posted, since Hannah Grace cries every time she sees the picture of herself left standing without a chair.

Monday morning we will be heading out again to visit a different coworker in the western part of the country. Please pray that our visit will be productive as we look for ideas about how to extend our work to the interior of the country.