CRAM it up

"Been CRAMming for the last week and a half. It's a summer honors program for high school juniors and seniors. My job consists of hanging out at the front desk waiting for the students to get out of class so that we can play. I also drive 12 passenger vans and talk on a walkie-talkie.

The first week of classes went relatively smoothly. Then the weekend came. It saw some major hiccups resulting in a couple of late nights, running around, and rather intense conversations. Needed conversations.

My time here is about half over and everyday makes me realize that we're all broken people. These students have a heck of a lot more going on than what is apparent after an initial small group meeting. Just like I have a heck of a lot more going on than is first apparent. The walk towards reconciliation (between God and one another) is slow, difficult and easy to avoid. But hopefully the idea of Christian community is communicated to the students. The idea that we all mess up, we all fall short of any sort of perfection, yet God has given us each other to restore ourselves to Himself and to the group. It's a beautiful experience."

Thanks to Josiah Hatfield for writing this entire post.

God left me with an open summer for a reason...

Somehow I knew that working CRAM for three weeks and helping out at camp for one just would be simply too much down time for me this summer. I should have known that it was never going to happen that way.

On Sunday, I unexpectedly joined the staff of Lutheran Hills as program director again. I'm not really at liberty to say much, but due to medical issues they really needed me to come help out the directing staff. So it's Allie, Hannah, and I running the show with an entirely rookie staff. They are really great workers and over the past three days I've been impressed by their work ethic, camraderie, and excitement for the kids. If they can just become more self-confident, they'll be great.

Anyway, I'm leaving for CRAM at Taylor tomorrow and I'll be there until the beginning of July, then I join back up with my friends at LH. Camp ends a week before Sierra Leone so hopefully that will be enough time to prepare. :-)

Here we go again!

This is Kroo Bay

I found this website earlier this week and I posted it on my missions blog, but I thought it might need to be seen here too.

The website is that of an organization that is not WMF (and not what I'm involved in) but they have an interactive portion that introduces you to the kids of the Kroo Bay slum, an area where I will be working a lot. So if you want to see what things will be like where I am, check it out here.