English Camp is ON!

Thank you for visiting our blogsite and for praying for us! We count it an honor to be sent by you and are so blessed by your support.

It is now Tuesday - Day 2 of the week - and English camp is well underway! I thought it might be fun to show you our schedule for most days:

7:30am - Devotions for leaders
8am - Breakfast
9:15am - Large Camp Meeting
11am - English Classes
12pm - Meeting for English teachers
1pm - Lunch
(1:30pm - David's naptime)
3pm - English Games
4-6pm - Free time
6pm - Dinner
7:15pm - Large Camp Meeting
8-9pm - "Guard duty"

It's a full day, but if we can rest at night, then we're ready to tackle the day. Most of our work is at the beginning of the day, as Larry teaches from the Bible in the morning meeting and we all teach English classes. I still need to get a picture of Larry in his "Larry Boy" costume, so stay tuned for that. On Monday, he spoke on Jesus Feeding the 4,000. Today, it was Jesus Calming the Sea. The theme for the whole camp is Jesus' miracles. Since tomorrow night is invitation night, tomorrow's miracle will be Jesus' resurrection from the grave.

Here's how you can pray right now:

• Praise God that the English lessons "miraculously" came together. We have different lessons for the different fluency levels of our kids and, with minor tweaking on occasion, they're very effective.
  
• Please continue to pray for Larry as he prepares his Bible lessons for the rest of the week.
• You must have been praying over our understaffed situation. The leadership managed to find 2 girls who can watch David (and a couple other kids his age) while we teach our English classes. Praise God for making the logistics work!
• Please continue to pray for David's rest. You may recall that he slept through the night only once last week and he has been crying a lot more as we put him to bed, regardless of how tired he is. This is improving (he slept through the night 2 out of the last 3 nights), but still has a ways to go. His sleep time is usually from 11am to 10pm, California time, so if you think to pray for him in the afternoon, that would be wonderful.

"I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world." Romans 1:8

Reunited

Guess who we saw tonight?! Kenji and Heather! We're happy to report that they're alive and well. They had a trying but rewarding week at Real Action, and are on their way back to camp as I write. We (Soderlunds) had an opportunity to go to Lodz today to experience a bit of the big city and to attend the Real Action closing concert. We met people whose lives were transformed (one actually came up to me, speaking polish and I mistook her for a drunk woman - oops), we enjoyed the music of a polish gospel choir, and we got to hear all about God's love for the people of Lodz. We're excited to learn more from Heather, Kenji, and the other Real-Action-Goers in the next couple days.

Tomorrow (Sunday), we'll attend church at Tomy Christian Fellowship, PROeM's church plant in Tomoszow. We're VERY excited to visit the church. Then in the afternoon, campers will arrive for English camp. We've been working all week on the lessons for this camp and hope to have them ready in time! Larry will teach the morning Bible lesson every morning, on the miracles of Jesus. The staffers in charge decided that his character will be "Larry Boy," whom many of you know from the Veggie Tales series. They're working on a costume for him. So for now, here's a picture of the real Larry Boy:


For those of you who read the PROeM TV post and clicked on the link (www.proem.tv) , Larry's character is much like the "Coach Sportek" character from last week. He's supposed to be really funny and exciting, while also conveying the message of Jesus' miracles.

Later each morning, we will all teach English classes. Our English lessons will be based on the miracles about which they learned with Larry. For example, on Monday they'll learn about Jesus Feeding the 4,000. We'll review the story in our lessons, and then focus on vocabulary words related to food.

Here's how you can pray right now:

• Praise God for a successful week of Real Action in Lodz.
  
• Pray for the English lessons for next week's camp - that they'll come together smoothly and that they'll effectively teach the kids.
• Pray for Larry as he prepares his lessons for next week.
• We were slightly understaffed last week and definitely felt it. We'll be understaffed again next week and we're running into a problem: Larry is asked to do something (say, belay for the campers at the rock wall) while Chrissy is asked to do something else (say, work the Snack Shack), and suddenly we need to figure out who will watch David, etc. Logically, this seems like something everyone here understands, but in the moment, it can be stressful when we're pulled in several directions. Will you please pray over this situation? Specifically, I'm starting to wonder about what will happen when we both need to teach separate English classes every day next week.
• Please pray for David's rest. He slept through the night only once last week. He is also crying a lot more now as we put him to bed, regardless of how tired he is. This isn't normal for him and we're pretty sure it's due to the jet lag and strange environment.

PROeM TV

Hi Everyone! I just discovered something cool: PROeM has been posting online videos of several talks from this summer. Most of them are in polish and I don't think you'll see us specifically, but it gives you a flavor of what we're doing over here. This week's camp is called "Junior 3 Multi-sport." Here's the link: www.proem.tv

David Mingling with the Natives

We're out of practice when it comes to taking pictures of ourselves, but we always find time to take pics of David. Here he is with his new best friend, Sammy, and with some of the campers.

First pictures

Okay, folks, here are the first pictures uploaded from our camera. Enjoy! Unfortunately, they're not in chronological order, but I think you get the idea.

Larry speaking on Tuesday night (subject: sin):

Our most eager camper:

During last night's salvation message, the speaker created this painting as he spoke. In the end, he filled in the letters on top, which read "Jesus Forgives" (in polish, of course). 73 campers came forward to accept Christ last night. Incredible.

Proof that we're managing to have a good time. We visited our friends' home for lunch today and they made fancy-schmancy ice cream sundaes. We'll do a lot in the name of relationships:

Now, back to the beginning. Here's the team at LAX, awaiting our first loooooong flight:

Travel took its toll on all of us:

Yep, it took its toll on every single one of us:

Here is the highly acclaimed souvenir soccer uniform from Heathrow:

Busy busy busy

Today (Wednesday, Aug 4) is Kenji's birthday. If you have a chance to email him or send him a message on Facebook, I'm sure he'd appreciate it!

How can it already be Wednesday? PROeM has kept us running around this week. We've been in the Snack Shack (working, of course... and maybe purchasing a few treats too); we've been preparing lessons and related material for next week's English camp; we've chased after David and other little ones; we've attended the campers' meetings; we (Larry) belayed on the climbing wall; and we've had several meaningful conversations with our friends here (focusing on those relationships!).

Last night, Larry spoke at the kids' evening meeting. He spoke on sin, a subject leading up to tonight's invitation message. Larry used a backpack (with the help of one of the campers) as an illustration of life. We fill our lives with "good things" or "bad things." To illustrate sin, he added weights to the backpack. At first, sins feel relatively light (maybe a small rock in the backpack), but sins quickly become heavy (20lb weights), and then we feel trapped (it's hard to move with a heavy backpack on our backs). He used Isaiah 59:2 to define sin, Romans 3:23 to remind the kids that all have sinned, and Luke 5:24 to lead into tonight's message. Christ is our only freedom from sin.

We're excited for tonight's message, as the kids hear the Gospel, some of them for the first time.

A quick update on Heather and Kenji: It looks like they have only limited internet access in Lodz. From what we've heard, they have had an awesome ministry there, but we currently don't have any details. We'll inform you once we have more to say!

From the comments on our last blog, it sounds like there are some of you who really do want to hear about the vomit incident (event?) on the airplane. So here we go. If you're not interested, please scroll down for today's prayer requests.

Our flight from LA to Heathrow took off at 4pm Friday. David fell asleep in his little bassinet seat around his usual bedtime, but woke up 2 hours later because the baby next to him started screaming. (Many of you have heard David scream, but he's a quiet little mouse compared to that baby!) David didn't go back to sleep at all after that. He wasn't crying or upset, just awake and fidgety.

As we prepared to land in Heathrow (around 2am Pacific time), we had to take D out of his bassinet seat and put him on our laps. I did that. Right after I picked him up, he threw up, mostly on himself and on my pants. I think he just had that "am I nauseous or hungry?" feeling that we all get when we don't sleep. Plus, we had fed him to keep him happy and he's not used to eating in the middle of the night. So up it came. But not a problem! Mommy brought a change of clothes for him! We changed him quickly and buckled up for landing. After we landed, as the plane taxied around, he threw up again. Big time. The through-the-nose kind, like he's never done before. How many extra outfits did his mommy bring? Only 1, and now it was all puked out.

Poor David didn't smell very good as we made our way through security at Heathrow. During our layover, he ran around in just a diaper while Larry searched the airport for new clothes. There aren't any children's clothing stores at that airport, in case you wondered. He found a souvenir soccer uniform and that did the trick. If you thought food was expensive at airports, try shopping for souvenir soccer uniforms! It's D's most expensive outfit to date. But I don't mean to complain; it was nice to have something for him to wear. I'll post a picture of it once I upload pics from our camera. Somehow, we survived, hopped on our plan to Warsaw, and have since washed the last of the puked out clothes.

Here's how you can pray right now:

• Pray for Heather and Kenji, and the other 200+ people serving at Real Action in Lodz right now.
• Pray for the campers here in Zakosciele, as they will hear the Gospel tonight.
• Pray for David, who's still having a rough time with the time-change. He hasn't slept through the night yet. He's also sleeping in the same room as Mommy and Daddy, which is another distracting change to his routine.
  
• Pray for the relationships that we're trying to strengthen during our stay.
• Praise God for health so far!
• 
  

Sleep is a gift from the Lord

Okay, we're here. We arrived at the camp last night around 11pm. We all went off to sleep; David was up for a few hours around 3am, but after that, we got several hours of sweet, uninterrupted rest. What a gift! Heather and Kenji left this morning for Real Action in Lodz. We're staying back at the camp, but may see them sporadically if we find our way to Lodz later this week. (It's only an hour from here.) SO, if they find internet over there, you can get updates on Heather and Kenji at Heather's blogsite (http://heatherannem.blogspot.com/).

Here at the camp, we're a little understaffed, since so many workers are at Real Action. Larry and I have been assigned to the Snack Shack (alright!!) and to overseeing some of the other volunteers. Thank you for all your prayers so far! They carried us a long ways.

One more thing: Tomorrow (Monday, Aug 2) is Larry's bday. He'd love to receive an email or comment on the blogsite from you. Also, since Poland is 9 hours ahead, maybe you could wish him a happy bday right now??

Here's how you can pray right now:

• Pray for the team in Lodz (including Heather and Kenji), as they serve the city.
• Praise the Lord for minimal jet lag! Please continue to pray that we fully adjust to the time zone (9 hours ahead of CA) quickly.
• This week's camp has just begun. Please pray for the children attending, that they would turn their hearts toward Christ.