Warsaw Mission Trip - Kid's Camp

This is Ian.

In the first week of July, I went with on a mission trip organized by my church to Warsaw (Poland). We partnered there with the Warsaw Volunteer Mission (WVM), which works with families in need, current and former prisoners as well as anyone who feels lost and wants to find their way in Christ. So much happened on this trip that I will have to space it out into a few posts here, and even then that will not be anywhere near enough to truly describe the amazing things that happened on this trip. I feel that as the week went on, the more meaningful it became, for both the church (both mine and the WVM) as well as those we helped. I’ll focus on the first two days in this post, when we hosted a ‘summer camp’ for kids and had an English café and Bible study for the adults. 

 I worked with the kids group as well as making lunches for everyone. We were running both a nursery for very young kids as well as older children. My particular group was with the more energetic kids, but I still stepped in and out of the nursery a few times as well, like in the picture above with my new friend who preferred the calmness of the nursery. Back in the main room, we played games with a lot of running, such as sharks and minnows, duck duck goose (we called it yes yes no to make it easier for the polish kids to understand) and lots of catching and throwing. In the picture below, the little girl diving on the ball followed me around for a while playing catch and when another boy (they seemed to have a brother/sister relationship, so we think they were siblings) came over to try and steal the ball, she clutched the ball to her chest, looked him dead in the eye, shook her head and pointed back at me, as if to say, “I’m playing with my new friend now”. The entire week was all about making connections with others, and that was one of the very first ones I made that week.

 The entire week the temperature was very hot (about 90 degrees F) so the second day we bought balloons for water games. But instead of buying water balloons, we accidentally got regular balloons, so when we filled them with water to a kid-safe size; they bounced and did not pop. To fix this, the kids found out they could bite holes into the balloons and squeeze them to direct the water more effectively. We tried setting up a few organized games, but very quickly we decided to just let them play with the water however they wanted, which they very much enjoyed.

 I was also a part of a small drama group for the kids, telling the story of how a princess who is supposed to marry the prince falls away from the path and becomes a pirate instead, then the prince comes to rescue her. It was a very simple, yet entertaining way we were able to communicate the basic story of Jesus with the kids, who some were very new to the Christian faith and did not fully understand what it was all about. I got to be the king (I didn't say anything, I was more of an extra to add to the scene)

 After we finished the two day event, we passed out about 25 full-length bibles to those who had been a part of the bible study, as most people could only afford new testaments, and the addition of an old testament could make their studies so much more fulfilling and give even more comfort and guidance to their difficult lives.

This was only the church events we did on Monday and Tuesday of a full week. There will have to be quite a few more posts to explain all that happened, and even that will not be enough to describe all the feelings and amazement of seeing just how much our visit meant to and impacted the lives of so many people.