Week Five

Sunday

11-1 Church
-Speaking/promotional work
2-5 Prepare for Groups
5-7 Prepare Dinner/ Mingle with groups
7-8 Leader Orientation
8:30-9:30 Prepare Club/Participate
9:30-10:30 Staff Meeting
10:30-11:30 Hang out with Youth/get them to bed

Monday

7:30-8 Devotional Time w/ Students
9-12:30 Work Projects
12:30-2 Kids Club
2-3:30 Pass out popsicles
4-6 Prepare for Hike (prepare water coolers, make snack, organize First Aid kits…)
7-9 Lead Hike/ Lead with Club (night service- lead worship, speak, coordinate)
10-10:30 Staff Meeting
10:30-11:30- Spend time with students/get them to bed

Tuesday

9:30-11:30- Lead students to museum
12:00-3:30- Help with Kids Club
3:30-5:30 Give out snack/ take students to Wounded Knee/ speak
5:30-6:30 Hang out with Students (playing games, mixers, talking)
8:30-9:15- Lead Club
9:15-9:45- Staff Meeting
9:45-11:30 Hang out with Students/Read Bedtime story ☺

Wednesday

9:00-3:30 Make Lists/Organize Community Cook-Out
3:30-5 Organize/Take students to feed Buffalo
5-7:30 Dinner Prep/ Make/ Clean-up
7:30-8:30 Hang out with students/Get ready for club
8:30-9:15 Lead Club
9:15-9:45 Staff Meeting
9:45-11:30 Hang out w/ Students

Thursday
9-3:30 Host Museum Tour/ Kids Club/ phone calls
3:30-6:30 Hang out with students
6:30-7:30 Dinner Prep/ Make/ Clean-up
8:30-9:15 Lead Footwashing Service
9:15-9:45 Staff Meeting
9:45-12:30 Hang out with students

Friday
6-8 Lead Clean-Up crews/Set out Breakfast
8-9 Breakfast/final organizing/Hang with students
9-10 Lead send off prayer and final words/Take Pictures
(NAP!!!! ☺)
12-11:30 FREE NIGHT!!!!! (Hang out with other staffs, go to Mt. Rushmore and see some IWU peeps…Joel LeMaire & Sara Dekker!)

Saturday
11-5 Shopping Trip
6-10 Cookout with community members and Mission Works Staff

Total: 72 hours
(Running Total: 354 hours)

Personal Reflection

This was such a challenging week. Last week our evaluations were basically out of this world amazing and this week I just felt I was doing awful on everything all week and our evaluations pretty much confirmed it. I don’t understand what went wrong this week, but I know it did. We had three groups that were unbelievably disrespectful and broke nearly every rule and even came up with issues we have yet to deal with. I don’t mean that it happened a couple times, but it was more that every time that one of our staff walked out of a room we would see the students AND adult leaders slapping us in the face with their actions. Setting off fireworks in sleeping rooms, ALs yelling in our face, students sleeping/watching movies at worksites, ALs going out drinking, blatantly going against what we said…just a few of the things we experienced this week. I could tell story after story but the punch line is FRUSTRATION.
And so the whole week our staff was just overwhelmed with the way everything was going. Even one of our alumni staffs said that it was the worst week of Youthworks he’s ever experienced. But then came our final night (it’s always those Thursday’s that get me) and we had a footwashing service. I do a form of creative worship giving them different stations to go to. One they play with clay, another is drawings, then a cross at the back for writing prayers, rocks to represent their burdens that they drop in to a bucket of water and finally a place at the back where a male staff of ours and I kneel and pray for their requests with them. Request after request just broke my heart. It was like no other week. One girl who had just miscarried a child two weeks before coming on the trip, one AL who had a wife and mother both losing their clarity of mind to Alzheimer’s, one girl dealing with a father who is slipping away due to MS, another girl who just had her legs amputated, people loosing jobs, one man who lost his father while on the trip…so many deep requests.
Then it was like I hit a brick wall. “Cami, don’t you see now why they acted the way they did?? They were crying out for MY love. They don’t know My comfort, My care, My compassion. You are My vessel.” So again, I’ve forgotten that my job description will forever boil down to this: Love others. The details of that may change but the basic truth never does. How is it that I keep forgetting? I’m still fallible and I still need Him. I’m grateful that He continues to love me enough to remind me.

Spiritual Reflection

I suppose the last two paragraphs sort of overlap between the two headings, personal/spiritual. I just realize that I have so much to learn. I’m not necessarily in a state of feeling that I’ve failed God, but rather that I am still continuing to learn. I continually need to be humbled. Right now I am reading Brennan Manning’s Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus right now and I am learning a lot. One passage of it speaks about how we as a Church have begun taking the little things we do and pretending that they really live up to all God has called us to. I know that I often want to just feel good about what little steps I’m making for Him, but His calling over my life is HUGE and I can always be taking bigger and bigger steps for Him. I don’t ever want to get to a point where living a Christian life has to be boring and that I’ve “figured Him out” enough to not just stand in awe of Him. I never want to give into the lie that growing in age means that should happen.



Lord, keep this love alive. Amen.






P.S.-Forgive the 700 word posts...It's kind of my journaling, I don't get much time to write or talk to people. :)