A New Week

It's Monday afternoon in Poland. Today is the first full day at the camp in Zakosciele. In addition to the 5 of us, there are 4 other Americans here, most of whom are new college graduates (just to give you an idea of their age range). We had a meeting with the camp director this morning to learn about what we'll need to do this week. They have us ironing tablecloths and sheets (yep, they iron their sheets here), cleaning, working the Snack Shack, and doing other miscellaneous tasks. Since the conference taking place here this week is fairly self-sufficient (compared to the children's camps), we've got more downtime than we want. We hope to find more ways to contribute as the week goes on. I am noticing, though, that the "feel" of the camp is very different this week, compared to the children's camp. Usually when the camps take place, there are a couple of large teams from U.S. churches that come to help. The camp may have up to 40 Americans with high spirits, excited for a short-term mission experience. I don't think the larger US teams want to come when something like this conference is taking place. This makes sense because most of the conference attendees are already believers and don't need very much compared to the kids at the camps. We Americans feel like we can make a bigger impact during the camps, so that's when we like to send our teams. Consequently, when these conferences arise, those we are here can feel short-staffed fairly quickly. We're glad to fill in the gaps in those moments this week.

Here's how you can pray/praise right now:

• Pray that we will recognize how to fill in the gaps (see above) this week.
• Pray for the relationships we're building with fellow Americans and Polish folks.
• Praise God that his name is being exalted through the conference this week. It's the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) Europe meeting (http://www.ifeseurope.org/). In the US, IFES is InterVarsity. College students from all over the world (not just Europe) are here to learn, grow and fellowship.