On behalf of Life Community Church, I attended the "Count Me In" youth camp in August with the kids from St. Catherines' Home for Orphans. In total we had 19 youth and 3 leaders (myself, Collins Okoth & Tilly Auma), and had an amazing time!
We started the adventure by packing 21 people, and their luggage, into a Nissan van that is meant to hold 14. As you can see in the photo below, the close quarters didn't dampen anyone's smiles.
Upon arriving, everyone exited the van with much excitement and entered the Clarence Matheny Ministry (CMM) grounds. This is the 4th year CMM has hosted the event along with Convergence Church, and each year the event draws more and more youth. For this reason we arrived EARLY, and patiently waited several hours for registration and room assignments.
The first year, in 2009, there were about 500 youth...this year, 2012, there was over 1,200!!!
Zippy, head of Compassion Ministries at Life Community Church, handled the pre-resgistration requirements for our group and she brought us snacks the first morning and later brought blankets for everyone. What an angel!
New Hope Ministries and Starfish Charities provided each of the St. Catherine's kids with a hygiene bag containing toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap and a wash cloth.
The girls had dorm style accomodations, while the boys slept outside in tents. Sorry boys!
The boys were the first to arrive at morning devotions the next day, saying that cold air blowing through the tents woke them up early!
Below Collins (one of my youth leaders) Rodgers and Felix are reading their Bibles.
Pastor Mark Jobe was one of 3 guest speakers. In the first session he taught, he spoke about how much God loves us. Later in the Camp he taught on "Destiny" and "The Holy Spirit". Pastor Joel Chola and Chris White also taught sessions on "Sexual Purity" and "Understanding Your Gifting".
In addition to daily sessions in the main tent, there were breakout sessions each day.
With so many youth in attendance this year the CMM staff had to put up overflow tents.
With over 1,200 kids, the food lines were long too.
Someone said "if you are not hungry when you got in line....
you will be by the time you reached inside"! Amen!
Mmmmmmm. Chow time was a favorite "session" for all the kids!
On the last day of Camp, the girls and boys had separate sessions to address more personal issues by gender. Mrs. Chola was assisted in answering questions from the girls by members of the Amercian team from Convergance Church.
One of the benefits of the Camp is to give the youth time to interact with peers from different areas. All areas and tribes of Kenya were represented as well as youth from Uganda and Tanzania.
And of course there was football (soccer for our American friends)!
Our team reached the semi-finals where they were defeated during a kick off.
Here some members of the CML team seem to be deep in thought. The t-shirts my brother John donated a couple of years ago are still getting good use!
Tilly assisted me in chaparoning the girls. Here she is with Lavendor, Susan & Stacy.
At the end of the week there were some happy but tired kids. It didn't take Tom long to give in to sleep while sitting in the sun during a break!
Saying goodbye to new friends is always hard on the last day of Camp... and somewhat hectic when you have 1,200 kids waiting for rides.
Below is our group, with an added 20 blankets (in the green bag) and 2 extra passengers. Somehow we all fit back into the same blue Nissan...amazing!
Couldn't have done it without the help of these two.
Much thanks Collins and Tilly!
