week one

First off I'm sorry I haven't updated as often as I thought I was going to be able to. I've barely had time to sleep between running camp, preparing, and spending time with my host family. I don't know if I talked about Ray and Mandy but they are awesome! I love them to death. Everybody in Alabama is so nice that its a whole different experience than what I'm use to. I know you guys want the stories so here we go.

There is a little boy named Kurt that is always on the go and its great. He is so intense with everything but he is adorable. His mom sent us an email of encouragement that said he and his sister fought like cats and dogs. This week his sister decided that she was going to learn to swim so they took her swimmies off and Kurt swam ahead of her and was telling her she could do it and encouraging her. When she got to him he told her to give him a high five. Thats what he have been doing all week and his mom said that he learned it from us and saw us doing it and wanted to be like us. She said that if he gets nothing else from that, him being nice to his sister is worth everything. There are so many stories like this one. Its the little things, moms and dads telling us that we are making a difference in not only their kids lives but the lifes back home and the families. They tell us that they can't get them to shut up about bible story, not sport time or rec or anything else but bible study! How awesome is that?!?!

There is another little boy named Seth who has a form of autisum that we he doesn't understand something or do something right he runs off. Well two girls, Taylor and Anna, have been helping pretty much in charge of Seth. Well we were playing steal the bacon and seth didn't get the ball so he got mad and ran off and all of a sudden you hear Taylor go oh no thats our cue and go running through the kids. Naturally the kids ask what are they doing. The first thing that comes to my mind is oh they are playing their own game of tag, its ok. As soon as I say that you Taylor catches Seth and it looks like she pushed him down because he just falls to the ground. Mind you all week we have been telling kids that when we play tag games you can't push each other. Funniest moment of the week by far!

The church has a slide in it so we have been having fun with it and today was Jakes birthday so it was extra fun! Lots is going on, we do camp all day and come home and do 3-4 more hours of work then go to bed and do it all over again. My bible study is awesome and 4 girls stayed and talked to me about baptisim stuff and one of my boys talked to another leader about becoming a christian and questions along that line. We got to pray for a kid to accept Christ and that one kid is totally worth it! His name is Kessler. After tomorrow the teams split and we begin the real adventure! Its going to be sad, challenging, different, and good all at the same time! We also split from our second group of kids which is going to be sad and weird all over again.