Time Travel Day

I am spending my last 2 weeks in France volunteering as a counselor at Harmony Bible Camp, at Centre Bonnefoi (the camp which Pitman COC was fixing up a few weeks ago). The theme verse is "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for eternity (Hebrews 13:8) and in our morning devotionals, we TRAVEL THROUGH TIME to hear the stories of faithful Christians throughout the Centuries. Our voyage is directed by 3 blumbering, quirky characters who never arrive at their intended destination in time and space.

The Friday that is smack-dead in the middle of the week is THEME DAY, where we form 12 teams of 10 kids of all ages, and compete together/against eachotehr in a variety of creative games.

Theme day began with our excellent time travelers disequilibrating, disengaging, and straight-up-breaking the time travel machine. The teams were set out to find clues which would help us find the missing part that could repair the machine, by journeying to 12 different time periods! The games included:
A Roman Relay: an obstacle course run in teams attached as slaves by a cord
A 15th Century Pirate Naval Battle: launching "cannon balls" to knock down bowling pins
A visit to Martin Luther King Jr., where groups wrote poems describing their dreams to improve the world
A Bible Copying Relay at an 8th Century Monastery
Identifying ingredients in a possibly poisoned drink for King Louis XIV
An 80's Dance Composition to a Michael Jackson Remix
Build a human pyramid for the Pharaoh and Queen Cleopatra

The challenges concluded with each team assembling their clues into a puzzle, and then each team's puzzle fit into a larger puzzle which contained the clue as to where the missing part for the machine was hiding.

Upon reinstallation of the part, the three bumbling time travelers still could not bring us back to our own time period!
Because the time space continuum was still entirely screwy, the monk from the year 792 appeared. Though he came from a technologicaly-impaired era, he was able to inform us of what our machine was missing. The monk knew that what was essential for travel in the space-time continuum was a fixed point. "When you traveled through time and met so many different persons, was there any person who was there for all of it? Who is present throughout all of time?" The key point, around which we could orient our machine and our lives permanently in space and time is Jesus himself.

After his speech, the monk exited the scene and our voyagers oriented their machine (their most difficult acting assignment yet) and took us back to the future.

After years of coming/sending other people to Centre Bonnefoi from the Pitman Road Church of Christ for their week of construction and renovation of the camp, it is neat to see the Harmony Bible Camp in Action.

The camps' mission statement includes getting kids to appreciate God and his creation. Until our evening of tent camping, and hearing all the whining of "I can't wait to get back to where everything is paved over!" I didn't realize how many of our campers were uprooted right from the city and plopped into the mountains.

As a counselor, I lead devotionals with my 4 campers every night. They are usually quite tired after a long day of 2 activities of choice, an hour long Bible class, and an evening activity, but they enjoy discussing the Bible passages and singing songs simultaneously in English, French and Italian (I have 2 French and 2 Italian girls in my room). It is already Monday, and camp ends on Friday.

I also have to organize four activities for the campers. I already lead a class of the Hebrew Alphabet and sewed Hackysacs. Tomorrow I am leading the first French version of World Vision's Tribe game, and Thursday we will be making Flipbooks and learning about the Animation process.

Time flies when you're having fun!

The Parable of the Sower

This past week of "Christians on Mission Intense Summer Session" was spent sowing seeds for the Kingdom, as they say...

During CEM week, we spent our mornings hearing great speakers talk about relevant Bible topics; the seeds of knowledge.
Young people from all over Europe met each other and learned that they are not alone as christians: the seeds of hope.
7 CEMistes received their certificates of apprenticeship completion, sending them back from whence they came; I'd describe us as faith saplings ready to be transplanted.
5 nursing homes in Marseille were visited by 20-person choirs of young people, showing the elderly that the youth haven't forgotten about them.
A choir of over 60 people sang in concerts on Thursday and Friday night and 20 people participated in skits that share aspects of the Christian life and the plan of salvation in an amusing manner.
A group of about 10 people went every morning to share croissants and coffee with persons "without permanent residences." Meeting, sharing and talking with the downtrodden will prepare Europe's future for a life of service and a more heart-felt desire to help with the problem of homelessness.

On Saturday morning, we took time to share feedback on our weeks. A teen from the Geneva church shared the following insights on the seeds we've been sowing:
"I feel really uncomfortable around older people; I even left a hospital room earlier than everyone else because I felt so uncomfortable. But, when we went to the nursing home, I tried very hard to overcome my discomfort and to talk to the residents.
I started by asking a woman her name. She said "oui oui."
The next woman I talked to, I asked her name and she responded, in a rather unfriendly manner, "why?"
I moved on to the next woman, who responded with her name but didn't want to talk anymore.
I asked a fourth woman her name, and she not only responded, but we launched into a great conversation!"
And this is what evangelism is like!"

This teen relived and then recounted to us a modern version of the Parable of the Sower, and learned a whole lot about evangelism, discouragement and persistence from 30 minute meet-and-greet after our concert.

So Much to Do...

...so little time!
It is hard to believe that only 1 month of CEM remains!
This past week was our only hard-labor week of the year at Centre Bonnefoi with a group of 40 Americans organized by and mostly constituated of the Pitman Road Church of Christ. My first ever mission trip, where I first learned that I could serve the Lord by cleaning toilets and other manual labors, was to Centre Bonnefoi in 2003, so being on a work week again there kind of brought my CEM/France experience to full circle; coming back to the roots of why I ended up here for a year.

Photos of our diverse projects are available thanks to our team photographer on the Pitman website:
HERE BE PHOTOS

The highlight of the various projects on which I worked was an erosion-control attempt to prevent a mountain from eroding over the roof on the side of our annex building. Sound almost impossible? We called ourselves "Team Mustard," because with faith as small as a mustard seed, you can tell mountains to fall into the sea. We were hoping that with our faith and some preventative meausres we could prevent the mountain from falling on our building! We're not expecting too much, given the tough winter snow melts that our little terrace and water-velocity breaking rock sachets will have to endure.

Upon return in Marseille, we exchanged our 40 visitors from the States for 50 visitors from the US, Belgium, France and Switzerland for a week of Mission in Marseille, called CEM Ete, or Christians on Missions Summer Session. It is a one-week version of my year, and a great week for the young people of Europe to do some intense service, evangelism, and take some good Bible classes as well. We have 2 classes each morning, then the usual and formidable 2 hour lunch break, then an afternoon activity (i.e. attending a Bible study or visiting the nursing home), then choir practice, then dinner hosted by Marseille locals (which includes me this time!) Our CEM Summer chorus will perform concerts on Thursday and Friday.
Well underway!