Antsla Summer Camp

On Monday, July 23, Matt, Lea, Andres, and the two new team members from the U.S, and I made the long drive from the far North of Estonia, to the Deep South. The first three days was full of preparation. We made signs, made up skits and tried to get as much done as we could before the kids arrived. On Thursday, the kids arrived. They came at noon. There was expected to be around 70 kids, but only 50 showed. The first day was all warm up stuff. The kids seemed to be having fun. They weren’t that enthusiastic, but I knew as time went on they would get more excited. The camp was going to be 7 days. They day stared at 12:00 and went to 7:00 P.M.

On the second day, the kids arrived earlier than 12:00. They seemed much more excited the second day. We started with games. They most enjoyed game was called the bucket game. We played this same game at the Avispea camp. After games, we would go to the stadium. It was about 1 kilometer away. There, we would play all sorts of games. I was in charge of teaching all the sports games. All the boys wanted to play soccer, and the girls wanted to play Frisbee and dodge ball. We played games at the stadium for 2 hours. After our 2 hours of sports, we all headed back to the church and ate lunch.

After Lunch, was free time then a short bible study with songs and skits. After the skits, we would split up into our small groups and talk about the skits and what they were focused on. It took about 1 hour or so. After that was free time, games, and campfire. We usually had bread and jam for campfire snacks. But on the last day we had sausages. When 7:00 P.M came rolling around, the kids started to leave, and we (the team) got to have the whole evening off. I was a great schedule.

On Saturday July 28, we got to hear a local band. They came and played for the kids. The kids seemed to like them. When we did our skit that day, we were doing David and Goliath. Kadri was David, and Matt and I were combined to make Goliath. I was sitting on top off his shoulders, and we were both wearing robes plus there was a sheet wrapped around the middle to hide Matt’s face. About halfway through the skit, Matt was having hard time breathing. I uncovered his face and saw that it was bright red. He was started to stumble a little and looked very dizzy. But he stuck it out until the very end. We were all surprised that he didn’t faint.

On Sunday, we had a church service for the whole town plus all the kids in the camp. It was 1 ½ hours long, and it was very hot. The kids didn’t seem to like it. They wanted to go outside and play soccer. When church finally ended, a huge bus arrived to pick up all he kids. We were going to go to Voru, a small town about ½ an hour away from Antsla. We were going to see some band/choir. The kids really liked it. After that, the bus took us to a beach and everyone went swimming. When they were finished, we drove back home and the day was then over.

On Monday A heavy rain came down. It was good because the ground was really dry, and everyone needed water for their gardens and lawns. It rained for the next two days. We did our skits under the tent to keep out of the rain. On Wednesday we had crazy hair day. The kids came with all sorts of styles of hair. Some had spikey, some had colored, some had just random things tied in. In the middle of the day, the kids could choose if they wanted to watch a movie inside, or go to the stadium and play games in the rain. I took about 20 kids to the stadium. It was really fun playing in the rain. Toward the end of the day, we did a big play type thing in the churh. It was really funny. It was all of the main charachters of the skits we had been doing coming together, and being interviewed. Tehn we had a campfire and roasted hotdogs. It was the very last event of the camp. The kids started to slowly leave afterwords. They gave us some gifts including white shirts which they told us to put on so that they could sighn them. It was really cool. Around 8:00 P.M, all the kids had left. We decided that we were going to pack everything up and drive the whole 3 and 1/2 hours back to Tallin. It was very tiring. When we finally got back, everyone went to their seperate rooms and fell asleep. The next morning we slept in as long as we wanted. It was a great way to relax after a long camp.