Friday, June 10, 2011

One Crazy Week

Well, I’ve been in Clarkston for just about two weeks. It feels like I’ve been here forever, and yet the time has flown. We have been preparing our programs for the rest of the summer during our time this week. Next week, short term missions teams will begin to come into Clarkston for week long missions trips, which we will lead as a group of interns. I’m on the Summer Camp team, which means that we’ve been running a summer camp for refugee children. Here is what a typical day is like for me:
6:15 = Prayer for the Nations (a time to pray for unreached people groups)
7-7:30 = personal devotions
7:30-8 = breakfast
8:00 = load up for summer camp
8:30-9 = I drive to pick up my campers from the different apartment complexes
9-10 = academic time with 3rd and 4th graders; we do reading and math
10-11:30 = I run game time for the three different age groups (lots of tag games)
11:30-12 = story time
12-12:30 = drop kids off back at the apartment complexes
1:00 = lunch
2-3 = break time
4-6 = Community Development (I and another intern will be running an ESL program during this time, though we’re still in the process of developing it)
6 = dinner
free time/ministry time after this

I’ll be doing Summer Camp every day for the entire summer, Monday-Thursday, so I could really use your prayers for energy. I love the kids but they take a lot out of me every day. The Summer Camp is a great way to get to know refugee families, and to show them that we want to help, not take advantage of them. Just within my 3rd-4th grade class, there are children from Eritrea, Nepal, Iraq, Korea, and even Kansas City
: )

We will run 5 day short term missions trips and seven day trips almost every week, beginning with a group coming this next Sunday night. That means that we have responsibilities even on the weekends. Thankfully, every Friday, all the interns take a Sabbath. We get the entire day off just to relax and rest up for the next team. This last Friday for our Sabbath, several girls and I drove around Clarkston and went to a great Ethiopian restaurant. It was delicious and spicy! We ate goat meat and rice with this spongy, pancake-like bread called ingira. Today for our Sabbath we went to an Indian restaurant, which was good, though I think the Ethiopian restaurant was my favorite.

We also moved today into our official apartments within Clarkston Oaks (our complex). For the last two weeks we’ve been living in the basement of one of the apartment buildings and sleeping on cots. I’m so excited to sleep in a real bed tonight! Still, the apartment we moved into belonged to a Somali family before we moved in today, so it reeks of fish. The fish smell is in the carpet, in the walls, everywhere. So if you all could just pray that we would either be able to get rid of it or live with it that would be great. Kind of a silly prayer request, but the pungent smell of old fish wafting out the door every time I walk in is just not pleasant. Thanks so much! I should be able to update more regularly after this because the apartments have internet!

1 comment:

  1. Jess! This sounds like an awesome experience! So multi-cultural! I love it! I'm glad you got to experience Ethiopian food and liked it! : ) It's delicious and even reading about you eating it made me so happy, just thinking back to my great experience in Ethiopia. Love you and I'll be praying for you!

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