Day 30- July 12, 2015
Today we spent the morning
preparing for the kids to arrive and making sure everything was ready for VBS
this week. Around 1 this afternoon, the
bus full of kids arrived! There are
about 39 kids from group homes throughout Mures County. All of them are orphans, most are social
orphans which means their parents are alive, but gave them up for some
reason. We aren’t allowed to take their pictures,
so my blogs this week won’t include any pictures of the kids. I’ve taken some of the camp grounds so you
can see that.
Once they had dropped off their
luggage, we all sat down for lunch.
After lunch, we took them to the chapel to get acquainted. The
first ice-breaker game we played was a game I found online that is like the
name game I play with my students at the start of every school year. In my version you sit in a circle. The first person says their name and
something they like that starts with the same letter as their first name. The next person has to say what the first one
said and then tell their name and something they like. Each person has to say everyone in front of
them, so by the end you’ve heard everyone’s name many times. This helps me learn the names quicker!! The version we played was called Picnic
Basket, we were supposed to say our name and something that we would take to a
picnic that starts with the same letter as our name. Since we were such a big group, I said they
only had to repeat the one person in front of them. Well, being such a BIG group turned out to
not work so well, so we spilt into a few smaller groups. What I didn’t take into account was that when
you translate some words they don’t start with the same letters. So in English my example was “my name is
Amanda and I would bring apples;” but in Romanian apples doesn’t start with and
A, so I had to change it up. It didn’t
work as well because of the sizes of the groups and the translation issues, but
we learned some names anyway. The second
game we played was Ships and Sailors.
Brett had the kids play it in VBS last week, so I described it
there. Next we made human knots and had
to untangle ourselves. My group didn’t
do so well. The team that won evidently
did it twice and we couldn’t even get halfway untangled! The last game we played was Mail Call. I’ve played this before, but I don’t think we
called it that. Everyone sits in a chair
in a circle. One person stands in the middle
and calls out a description that would match some of the people sitting around
them. If that description applies to
you, you have to get up and run to find another chair. The person in the middle tries to get one of
those chairs. They had a lot of fun with
this game!
Once the ice had been broken, we
gave them some free time to play before dinner.
Krisitan and I went and sat by the soccer fields to watch some kids play
soccer. While we were sitting there, one
of the older girls sat near us. I can’t
remember what was said, but we figured out that she knew some English. So we chatted with her while we watched the
others play. Soon it was time for
dinner!! It was a very yummy dish of rice and pork.
After dinner we went back to the chapel
to play some more games. We split the
kids into three teams for VBS based on their ages. The teams then decided on names. The oldest group decided on Tigers, the middle
on The Brave Ones, and the youngest on Puppies.
(At least I think that’s what they all said, it was loud and I didn’t always
catch the translation) After that we
went down to the soccer fields to play some relay games. First they had to dribble a soccer ball
between their teammates who were standing in a line. Next we tied them to a partner for
three-legged races! It was funny
watching them figure out how to walk while tied to a partner. Some of them didn’t want us to untie them
after the races were over; they wanted to get better at it! Lastly, we had them run sprints. I was the one of the “end posts” to show them
where to turn around and run back to their team. Most of my team ended up grabbing me to help
slow them down so they could turn around!
Finally we sent them to bed! After a team meeting we got to do the
same. This week is going to be jam
packed with activity!!!
Please be praying that we will
bond quickly with the kids and that we will have a positive influence in their
lives. Also, please pray that they won’t’
see this time as just play time, but really take something away from the Bible
lessons each day.
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