Day 3 dawned with waking up the students in a similar fashion to the previous day and forcing them onto the bus with the threat of docked pesos. Then we told them that they didn't have to work.
The rest of the morning was spent in quiet time and some free time. During worship and quiet time, I just pictured Jesus' life - snapshots from it like a movie trailer or music video might give and was really impacted and able to worship from my heart. However, I was out of it totally for a large part of the free time. I think, given what happened later that day, is I was being hit by the Enemy (Satan) and that his goal was to get me to believe I was isolated and no one was interested in the mission and that it didn't matter I'd come back. I didn't fight it lying down. I really prayed and was reading through Psalms beginning God for any kind of sustenance to ward off the loneliness and discouragement. After awhile I just kind of gave up and dozed off until lunch.
That afternoon the activity we were going to do fell through until the following day, and I had a good chunk of time to really teach the youth group about the specific migrant kids we were going to be involved with at the Sakuma Brothers Camps. Before I set up my stuff I literally fell on my knees and prayed over what I'd say.
I kicked off the session with this video:
Then I talked about a lot of things, from the general migrant situation all the way down to specific stories. One story was particularly emotional for me and was about a girl named Erica who was seven when I met her. Here's what I wrote in my journal in 2007 when she told us her story.
"Erica's stepfather is brutal. She is terrified of him. She tried to run away not long before we arrived for the mission trip and he caught her. He pulled out her hair and beat her. She cried that she just wanted him to stop. I don't know and will never know how frequently these attacks happen, but I have a feeling this wasn't the first or the last since she was running away to escape him. She has no way to get out."
I read that word for word to the youth group and showed them her picture. I expected that I'd start to cry telling the story and I absolutely did. I really struggled to get through it without completely falling apart. Thinking about and typing this out now I'm feeling a knot in my stomach. What kills me is we couldn't do a thing to help her. She and her family just disappeared from the migrant camp not too long after we learned about the abuse, and despite searching every migrant camp we could find in Skagit Valley we could not find her.
I know the story was maybe one of the most powerful and upsetting things at training camp for some of the students, and affected them in the other really powerful emotional experience of the trip that they went through the following day (which I will blog about later).
After talking about that I was pretty drained and wanted to go decompress, but as a leader on the trip I had to keep engaging. However my heart really wasn't in what was going on and I was still pretty messed up.
That evening and the following day I got the chance to catch up Abbey, a freshman in high-school, who'd happened to miss the talk. That was really an enjoyable experience despite the emotional toll of talking about Erika again. It wasn't as brutal, but it did mess me up. However, the one on one being able to really dialog and answer all her questions and give her more stories and a big of a deeper insight than I was with a larger audience was a highlight of training camp for me.
Day four of training camp really was a lot of practical preparation like dramas, in fact almost exclusively dramas, with small breaks. The drama I was a part of overseeing was called "Chains". It has a lot of personal meaning for me (read some of my previous posts, particularly "Creating and Acting in Dramas and Drimes for Social Justice) for more details on that.
So Day 4 wasn't as emotionally intense as Day 3, however it was a good day and for the students it was an exhausting day. I know I was dealing with a lot of warfare in the evening. Pretty sure Satan was mad about what had been accomplished so far at training camp, and was afraid of what could (and did) happen when we got out onto the real battlefield.
The rest of the morning was spent in quiet time and some free time. During worship and quiet time, I just pictured Jesus' life - snapshots from it like a movie trailer or music video might give and was really impacted and able to worship from my heart. However, I was out of it totally for a large part of the free time. I think, given what happened later that day, is I was being hit by the Enemy (Satan) and that his goal was to get me to believe I was isolated and no one was interested in the mission and that it didn't matter I'd come back. I didn't fight it lying down. I really prayed and was reading through Psalms beginning God for any kind of sustenance to ward off the loneliness and discouragement. After awhile I just kind of gave up and dozed off until lunch. That afternoon the activity we were going to do fell through until the following day, and I had a good chunk of time to really teach the youth group about the specific migrant kids we were going to be involved with at the Sakuma Brothers Camps. Before I set up my stuff I literally fell on my knees and prayed over what I'd say.
I kicked off the session with this video:
Then I talked about a lot of things, from the general migrant situation all the way down to specific stories. One story was particularly emotional for me and was about a girl named Erica who was seven when I met her. Here's what I wrote in my journal in 2007 when she told us her story.
 |
| Erica playing with puppets the first week I met her. |
I read that word for word to the youth group and showed them her picture. I expected that I'd start to cry telling the story and I absolutely did. I really struggled to get through it without completely falling apart. Thinking about and typing this out now I'm feeling a knot in my stomach. What kills me is we couldn't do a thing to help her. She and her family just disappeared from the migrant camp not too long after we learned about the abuse, and despite searching every migrant camp we could find in Skagit Valley we could not find her.
I know the story was maybe one of the most powerful and upsetting things at training camp for some of the students, and affected them in the other really powerful emotional experience of the trip that they went through the following day (which I will blog about later).
After talking about that I was pretty drained and wanted to go decompress, but as a leader on the trip I had to keep engaging. However my heart really wasn't in what was going on and I was still pretty messed up.
That evening and the following day I got the chance to catch up Abbey, a freshman in high-school, who'd happened to miss the talk. That was really an enjoyable experience despite the emotional toll of talking about Erika again. It wasn't as brutal, but it did mess me up. However, the one on one being able to really dialog and answer all her questions and give her more stories and a big of a deeper insight than I was with a larger audience was a highlight of training camp for me.
 |
| The chains being removed at the end of the skit. |
 | |
| This was a very physically demanding drama. The girls were bruised from practice. |
No comments:
Post a Comment