I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Riga, feeling oh-so-artsy; here I am, a writer, sipping coffee and plying my trade in a foreign locale! How quaint. The reality of it is, though, that I've almost been dreading sitting down to catch up on my journaling - there's so much to cover from the last week and change that I'm not entirely sure where to start. I had grand dreams of journaling every day while at camp, but I quickly realized that not only was that idea impractical, but the couple of pages I might have found time to write each day would not have come close to covering all the events, emotions, and contacts from each day. Obviously, waiting until the week is over to do one giant recap isn't a stellar idea, either... but too much happened this past week to not even try to write about it. Maybe I should have written every day, instead of making excuses about not having enough time or energy; it'd sure make this recap process a lot easier, instead of trying to decipher some hastily scribbled notes. Anyways, here goes nothing...
I don't think I'll be able to recreate and outline the events of each day, but I'll try to recall and relate some of the highlights. In the grand scheme of things, I'm far more interested in writing about people, emotions, reactions and relationships, but the actual physical location of the camp is worth describing to set the context. Zosna is a small little village about 30 minutes from Rezekne (I'd describe the drive to camp for you, but frankly I've never seen the roads... every time I've traveled to or from Zosna I've either been buried in the back of a cargo van or it's been pitch dark out). It's a farming community, and apparently dirt poor. The camp is held at an old, dilapidated school, which dates back well into the Soviet era, and is oddly enough located on the shores of the largest lake in Latvia.
The main building is fairly run down but still functional (in the most stringent sense of the word), at least for our purposes. It's two stories tall, with 5 classrooms on each floor (our team occupies a couple classrooms, and some of the kids and staff sleep in the others, but most of the kids sleep in tents out back), in addition to a large meeting hall and kitchen which are located on a wing on ground level. Most of the cooking is done on a huge wood-burning cookstove outdoors behind the building, where a couple of guys spend most of the day stoking the fire and stirring pots filled with whatever is on the menu; soup or pasta are common choices. The kitchen indoors is pretty basic - there's no running water, and they have to bring in their own propane stove to use during the week, but somehow the ladies working in there manage to keep everyone well-fed despite the spartan conditions.
The "dining room" consists of several sketchy tables and benches situated in an alcove behind the building, and covered by a giant tarp... which doesn't quite cover the entire eating area. The bench at the far end tends to get quite wet if it's raining at all. The tarp was an early-week addition (new this year!) - before its appearance everyone would just eat in the meeting hall if it rained. In theory, the tarp was a brilliant idea... but in practice, it was too riddled with holes, susceptible to being torn off by gusts of wind, and generally more of a hassle than a help.
The campfire, where we spend most of our evenings, is located in between the building and the lake. Oddly enough, even though we're located within a stone's throw of this large lake, we have to walk 10-15 minutes to another nearby lake to go swimming and wash up; apparently, the lake by the camp isn't clean enough to swim in, and there's all sorts of glass and debris at the bottom. So sad. I, personally, would not go into that lake if you paid me ten dollars, since I saw a ginormous lake creature/monster in it last year. You can laugh all you want, but i know what I saw, and I don't plan on tempting fate by wandering into its lair.
Speaking of dangerous things, there's a playground on one side of the property that accurately fits the description, "if it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger." It's old, rusty, and dilapidated, and seems designed more to create an agile and chiseled physique than to be a place to play; it has a balance beam, dip bars, chin-up bars, monkey bars, a set of weights, even a sand pit to practice doing jumps and flips into. Bizarre.
The volleyball court is oversized and overgrown, and the football pitch (aka "soccer field") is small and spartan - the goals consist of some pipes stuck into the ground at each end of the field. Despite the fairly primitive conditions, everyone loves the place; it's quaint, it's old, it's rustic, and it keeps you focused on the real reason you're there (relationships) rather than on awesome facilities or amazing programming. The one part of the camp, though, that everyone is in agreement about being horrendous, are the toilets. They're awful. they harbor a perpetual, lingering odor of feces in them, the toilets don't always flush (due to low-to-non-existent water pressure), and even when they did it was sometimes cause for concern, as you would have to be cautious to avoid being splashed by water flowing over the very material you hoped to abandon there. I don't know who designed the style of toilets, but they were either stupid, criminally mischievous, or had never seen a "real" toilet in their life. They had a sort of shelf or platform strategically placed to receive your deposit, which would then be swept away into the drain at the front of the toilet by the water rushing in from the back. This idea may be great in theory, but two problems immediately become evident upon first use: (1) some things are best left unexposed to air, which is capable of conveying offensive odors swiftly and strongly to your nasal cavities, and (2) should random distribution of matter create a mass which has a sloped or ramp-like characteristic, the sudden influx of water may fail to wash the matter away and instead ramp up into the air and splash messily around in a confined and nearly inescapable area.
Even worse, however, than the malodorous toilets were the evil mosquitoes which lived there. not content with chomping on body parts normally exposed during the day (as their outdoor cousins were quite adept at doing), upon entering the bathroom they would immediately target the most sensitive areas of flesh as soon as they were exposed. Not cool. The "mozzies," as the Brits call them, were characteristically ferocious all week long, no matter where you were. The evening campfires were the worst; if you weren't right near the fire or wearing a jacket and long pants, they would absolutely destroy you.
(Enough about the physical location)... The week started off pretty well. Not to pat myself on the back, but I think the section in Philippians that I talked about and led some discussion on helped to set the tone for the week about what we were there to do (serve God, serve others). Some of the team had a rough start to the week - I think that the fairly primitive conditions, a bizarrely random camp where the only schedule is that there is no schedule, the language barrier, and a different environment and culture than people were accustomed to helped get people waaaayy out of their comfort zone (which is always a good thing, I think). Plus it usually takes a few days for people to get to know the kids and figure out what works in their Bible study groups.
My group (actually, "our" group, since I was co-leading with Jane, one of the gals from the UK) got off to a slow start the first couple of days - it was really hard to get them involved and comfortable enough to speak their mind. It was discouraging at first, because I had run into the same exact difficulty last year and had high hopes for this group this year, as the kids were a bit older (16-17 year-olds, mostly) and I knew some of them already, and they seemed to have a lot more potential for deeper discussion and conversation which we were unable to really tap into and unleash. By the 3rd day, though, they really started to open up and engage with the text, and by the end of the week it was obvious that God was using his Word to work in all of our lives.
We spent the week looking at passages from John which dealt with the question of "What is Truth?" It was deep and meaty stuff, but it was fun to see the group beginning to chew on and mull over some heavy topics. Steve sat in on our second session, and he commented afterwards that it seemed like I was doing most of the talking. At first I reacted negatively to his critique (which was ridiculous, since I had asked him for his honest opinion/advice/criticism in the first place!), thinking to myself that gosh, if no-one else is going to talk then someone has to say something. There's no harm in explaining something about the passage, or telling how they could apply some concept to their life, is there? Maybe not, but as Steve reminded me, there can be a good way to teach, and there can be a better way... and I was probably settling for an o.k. study group instead of pushing for awesome.
Anyways, after a couple of mediocre days to start the week, Jane and I started trying to ask even more pointed, poignant, and personal questions... and whether out methods improved or it just took a couple of days for our group to gel, they started to respond. The last two days we had them take their booklets (which had the texts we were looking at printed in English and Russian on them) back with them and read over the passage we would be looking at the next day, and come prepared with some questions of their own that they had after reading through the passage. That seemed to work well, and spurred on some great discussion. When it comes right down to it, we all have the same questions in life: Why is there so much pain in this world? How can I possibly live a life pleasing to God when I screw up all the time? If God loves me, why does He let me suffer? Yikes... those are the same sort of questions that I'm still looking for answers to. It's humbling to have someone ask you a question that not only do you not have a good answer for, but that you've been wrestling with for years. I guess all you can do (and what we did) is share from personal experience, point them to the Word where relevant, and express an absolute confidence in God's love and sovereignty. What else can you do?
I think the watershed moment came on day 3 - Jane came up with an idea for a great ice-breaker to help get the discussion started on the topic of trust: the ever-enjoyable "trust fall." It was fun, everyone shared some laughs, and Anatoly even joined in the fun when he happened to stop by to visit our group. He shared from his life a couple of times during the week with our group, and it was always so great to hear how God has been at work in his life, and see how his heart for others beats so strongly.
I'm running out of time... I've only got about an hour left until we all have to meet back together, and I have oceans of material left to cover. I feel like I've only just begun to touch on the week, and everything is fading quickly from the nearly-present into distant memory. Oh well... I'll just do what I can today and hopefully cover some more later.
I may have mentioned this before, but it was really hard for me to see some of the kids from the orphanage again - not because I didn't want to see them (I did! and it was great to be able to see some of them again), but because it hurt my heart to realize that, while my life goes on, they're still stuck in their perpetual state of limbo, hoping to escape that life somehow. How can you show someone that God loves them when it may seem to them that they're unwanted and unlovable? Seeing Vladik again, especially, opened up a wave of emotions that were familiar from last year... wishing I could do more for those kids, upset that I was so helpless, broken-hearted because of their plight. One thing I'm just now realizing is that god can still use their absolute shit situation for some good - Vladik's sensitive heart, friendly nature and gentle spirit touched many people, both last year and this, American, British and Latvian. So you could say that God is using a bad situation to work good in people's lives... but that only leaves the question half answered: is God still good if the world isn't? Tough question. The reflex "Christian-ese" answer is "Of course He is! He's God, and God = good." But reflex answers don't always touch on the deeper issues, the personal pain and suffering that is common to every member of the human race. God
is good, I know that, but then how come life is so filled with pain? That seems to be the question of the week...
One thing that really encouraged me this year was the growth that I observed in some of the guys I knew from the year before. Ivan and Victor in particular seem to be in a good place - attending a good church in Riga, getting into the Word, asking questions and listening. On Friday night we had sort of a "talent night," hoping to have the Latvians do most of the stuff during the campfire that we had been doing: songs, skits, testimonies, etc. I had asked Ivan earlier that day if he would share his testimony that night, and he was very hesitant, unsure if he was ready or willing to take that step and share in front of everyone. I kept asking him during the day and was praying my guts out for him, but even ten minutes before we had him slated to share he wasn't quite sure if he was up for it... But when it was crunch time, he finally consented, stepped up, and knocked it out of the park. I was so proud of him, so grateful to be his friend, and so blessed by his story - and I think a lot of others were, too. he shared about how he had grown up in a Christian home, but it wasn't until this past year that he really committed his life to Christ and made his family's faith his own. It meant some lifestyle changes and some hard decisions, but he knew that he couldn't limp along any longer with the crutches of other people's faith: he needed his own. I think that it hit a lot of people right between the eyes... not just his story, but the fact that he was willing to be so open and vulnerable in front of his peers.
I had been praying and hoping all week long for one of the older guys in particular to sort of "step up" and show that they took their faith seriously, and that it was important to them. It seemed to me that, especially in that culture where everyone seems to take their cues from those older than them, one of the older guys being willing to share their testimony could have a real positive impact on the camp as a whole that we, as foreigners, couldn't hope to replicate. Time will tell if that turns out to be the case.
I'm getting to overwhelmed with thoughts, emotions, and memories right now to have any hope of getting them down coherently... I think I need to talk a walk and get my thoughts settled down and organized.
