For the last couple of years we have had a backpacking camping trip and this has been our premier summer camp. Up until now we just did this once but this year we decided to do two trips so that we could take more boys up for a great time of enjoying God's beauty and hearing about his saving gospel.
We welcomed a large group of volunteers this time: our friend Adam from Michigan, Steven's friends Jason and Bryce from California, and Parker, Drew, and Ryan from Jen's home town. Plus Steven and Josh are new staff and Ghita came to help translate so we were a group of 10! Ten guys on one trip is something that doesn't happen very often and for this it was perfect!
We had a rough beginning because the director at one of the orphanages changed things up on us the day before, so we had to scramble to change around which boys were going when and we had to shorten the first trip by one day. To make matters worse when we left one of the cars wouldn't start so we got up to camp pretty late.
We ended up having a great time though and God blessed everything that we did. The boys were super excited about camping and hiking, here we are at the Sphinx, a rock formation on the top of one of the mountains.
We hiked of course to the cross because it is such an impressive monument and is a natural place to talk about what Christ did for us.
Here I am showing off my new backpacking gear, my Osprey Kestrel 68 backpack worked out really nicely! I look forward to using this and my Alps Mountaineering sleeping bag and pad on many future trips.
Around each meal and at some hiking stopping points we had devotional talks. We talked about what James says in his book of the Bible, that we need to be joyful in trials and to live out our faith. This whole trip was filled with trials and tests right from the start because of all the changes that happened, so we got a chance to model this for the boys. We also talked about the life of David and his triumphs and struggles.
Adam gave his testimony and the boys were able to really connect with his story.
We did lots of fun stuff too like tour this awesome cave that is part of a monastery compound.
And we saw lots of waterfalls on our hikes up and down the mountains and valleys.
This gave me a great opportunity to try out some of the settings on my new Panasonic LX-3 that my friend Dan from Canada gave me. I am really excited about what I was able to do and how these pictures turned out. I've always wanted to take motion blur shots of waterfalls because I've always loved waterfalls so much.
Here I am with my pal Steven, wearing our Patagonia gear.
We had a really great time and made it through the trials and hardships as a stronger team. We had many great talks with the boys and they seemed to really listen. As a team we talked a lot about planting seeds in these boy's lives, God says that we are responsible to do this and also to water existing seeds. But he tells us that it is His job to make the seeds to grow, so I would like to ask you to pray for these boys. Pray that the seeds that we planted and watered will grow into faith and that the boy's lives will be transformed. Pray for the boys to put what they learned into practice, this is always the hardest part especially for them going back to the same exact bad situation. Pray for all of us who were helping on this trip to be continuously used by God and that this will be looked back on as a great growth experience. Pray for this to continue to be a great and powerful trip for many years to come and for more guys to continue coming not only on this trip but throughout the year.
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