Sunday afternoon is warm and pleasant when I picked up the kids at St. Luke’s. Sleeping bags and over loaded duffel bags. Excitement in the air and a lot of nervous energy spent on running around. We are going to St. Paul’s to met the bus that will take them to Camp Stevens. The bus will have other kids from the diocese. All loaded and on their way!
The network had sixteen young people going to camp this week. I was thinking about my first trip to camp at Julian. I do not know what year that was but I think it was the first year the camp opened. Since then I have had three children and seven grandchildren that I have taken to Camp Stevens. The kids in my car today were all from the Sudanese community. They all had been to camp before so they were very excited. We all enjoyed a camp song on our way to St. Paul’s. You remember this don’t you?
“b-i-n-g-o, b-i-n-g-o,Bingo was his name O” if you do know this one it will stick in your mind for the rest of the day or night.
I was having a problem getting excited about them going. I keep thinking about the girls the Boko Haram took captive. Some of them are the same age as these kids. I took a name of one of the captive girls from a list provided to our church. My girls name is Sarah Samuel. In news flash just in as I write that some of the girls have escaped. I hope Sarah is with them.
A side note to all of this; the refugee community has no idea how to tell us volunteers the sizes of their children. We have bathing suits, underwear, and socks but when we went to assign clothing to names the sizes were way off. All of just sat down and laughed and said it must be a cultural thing. After much time and patients we were able to get most of the kids their size. The staff is very good at this kind of work they have the patients of all dear mothers. They also know the culture of the families and are able to work with them, we could not do without them.
Life, Myth and Sunshine 