Semilla de mostaza - Mustard Seed

Post by Drew Kyle -Teen Camp Sports leader

Today was the FINAL day of camp and to sum up the week with one word, it was FUN! 

We started the day by going to the school where the ESL camp is held. The trip to the school usually takes 30 minutes but today it was rather smoother and only took 15 or so. Arron (One of the staff at reconciliation) gave us a message on planting seeds in these campers. As you all know this has nothing to do with shovels and dirt but it has to do with love. Arron said, " You may see no immediate effect (or affect ((I was never a great speller))) but in the future your love for these children/teens will grow and spread to others. From there on the day was usual with a very interesting skit from Howie and some others about Sports. 

Personally from there on I (Drew Kyle) had left the group to start my quest/job to blow up 1'500 water balloons on a over sized faucet (Excuse my grammar again). This took a little over an hour to do with some help from Evan Ritter and others. By the time all the balloons were filled we had about 6 trash cans full of water balloons. 

Now I want you to imagine yourself being a 15 year old From Spain attending a camp that has no air conditioning even though it is about 100 degrees. Once you see a single water balloon your immediate reaction would be 'I'm going to snatch a balloon and charge at my friend with it'. No doubt that is what all these kids were thinking when they saw these 6 beautiful buckets of water balloons. My job was to prevent them from getting to the balloons because we were going to play balloon toss and other smaller games. I successfully did this without injuring any child. By the way, stop imagining yourself as a child, rather imagine yourself as a 17 year old American boy trying to teach kids how to play balloon games to a ton of Spanish speaking children/teens. It was difficult but ended up going quite nicely. 

I will skip a couple of things that we did to say that by the end of this Marc Kyle and Ralph Darby were soaked in water and so were many other counselors. 

As I sit down by Rebecca we both give eachother a high five as we have just finished our camp week! It's amazing to think that we actually did this camp for a full 5 days! It felt like 2 days! 

All these wet counselors and staff members went to eat lunch where we discussed our days and enjoyed Hamburgers (So Spanish right ;)). 

I don't know what everyone else did after this bit we returned to the convent where I took a long 3 hour nap and later was woken up by my father who was saying "You have 5 minutes to be ready". I thought it was like the next day when I woke up so I was kinda surprised but instead I find out we are going to the school to celebrate the "graduation" or "Congradulating" (lol) them for there English learning. We took a ton of photos and we're able to say our goodbyes to the campers.

Personally I found it very difficult to say goodbye to many of the students because I don't know if I will ever see them again. Also I would love to watch the seed that we planted in them grow. 

The whole New Life Glenside Team loved these children very much. And our hope and praise would be that these kids would return home to love others and to maybe someday find true love from Christ. 

Right now I sit on my bed listening to music and writing this post with a stomach full of ice cream and nice foods. 

The team asks for prayer on safe travels back home as we leave in about 1 day and also to love eachother as we have had a lack of sleep. Health is great. 

Thank You very much for your support/prayer for us as we plant seeds in Spain!

-Drew Kyle (Best water balloon blower upper ever) 

God Bless

P.S here's a picture of Elias Ritter at dinner