moscow young people's camp

July 28 – August 2

Moscow Young People’s Camp 2008! This is going to be similar to the post on Wesley Days from Camp Wesley in Latvia in the sense that I will give a brief overview of camp and then delve a little into specifics. As expected, not much time to write each day and way too much to express everything that went on but I plan on hitting the highlights!

Monday (28th)
We took a bus to camp and met up with the team for planning and preparation between the Russian leadership team and the American team to work out last minute details. Michael went to the train station to pick up Zina which was such an awesome surprise when found out she was going to be able to make it camp! (Just a reminder, Zina is Kira’s – Pastor in Kirov – roommate). The “camp” is more of a retreat center with a dining hall and a large auditorium. There are several floors with rooms that are kind of a mix between hotel and dorm rooms. The look more like dorm rooms, but each has two beds, one table, two small nightstands and one closet. They also each have their own bathroom and shower so that was really nice. The building itself seemed pretty old, but it was the perfect place to have a more seminar-based camp. I was rooming with Zina too so that was really exciting. Brandon and Michael were paired with two of the guys from the Missouri team. We all had a time to hang out after the meetings and talk and I can’t say enough how awesome this team is from Missouri. They also had a LOT of peanut butter and animal crackers, but I promise that’s not what made them so cool :)

So camp officially started on Tuesday the 29th and went through Saturday August 2nd. Here is an overview of the schedule (and I use that term lightly as usual). Tuesday and Saturday were slight exceptions with registration taking up the most of the day until picking up in the schedule at 3pm for the first talk on Tuesday and camp ending after the morning devotion on Saturday to head to the church dedication.

8:30am breakfast

9:30am devotional time (we met all together in the small room and then read the devo by ourselves in our booklet and then split up into small groups to discuss and pray)

10:30am 1st session of the day (usually in the auditorium and had some worship followed by a talk by someone)

11:30am chai (tea) break – sometimes games as well

12pm 2nd session (again in the auditorium) a talk by someone, sometimes with worship beforehand)

2:00pm lunch

3:00pm 3rd session (auditorium) worship followed by a talk by someone

4:30pm games/chai

5:00pm 4th session (auditorium) worship followed by a talk by someone

7:00 dinner

8:00 5th session (auditorium) worship sometimes followed by a talk by someone

9:00 evening event (differed from night to night…with an international night where each country planned something to share and Korea, the Ukraine, Russia, and the States were all represented)

11:00 time for bed (though of course this happened not even one night as every the night event went past this time and then people hung out afterwards, but it was a good effort)

Hopefully now you have a general idea of camp, however know that there is much more to be told of the relationships that were built both with the American and Russian teams and the details of everything that happened over the days of camp! The Lord was really at work this past week, despite a lot of frustrations between teams and trying to break the language barrier (thankfully we had three translators and a forth on the last day!) but it is so evident that He moved among the people there and the camp really made a huge impact on the lives of everyone there.