Germany - Summer 2012

Guten Tag!
I realize this recap is about 2 months past due, but I wanted to write it anyway.  It is much shorter then the one I wrote for Haiti last year, but no less important.  

This past summer, four adult leaders and 15 high schooler traveled to Cologne, Germany to teach english, lead activities, and deliver the Message of the Gospel to German campers.  

These photos represent my most significant moments of the trip, and reveal the purposes for which I believe God sent us.  

We held the camp at a small retreat center in the Eifel, a national park in western Germany.  The park offered many recreational activities and opportunities to enjoy the outdoors.  I was amazed how similar this region was to the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania.  No wonder so many German families came to settle here!

My campers!  From left - Christopher, Erik, and Carl.  I was the only adult leader who shared a room with campers, as the rest were supervised by our high schoolers.  I was responsible for these kids because they were the rowdiest!  Good kids, but VERY energetic!  When in our room, they mostly spoke German.  This was strange for me because I usually had no idea what they were saying.  When asked, they told me they were talking about sports or Transformers!  Topics of utmost importance for middle schoolers!

In the evenings, after the pastor gave his message, we would go to our rooms for group reflection.  These discussions were interesting because Christopher and Carl were believers, but Erik was not.  He kept quiet during these times, and later told me he wanted nothing to do with God.  I prayed for Erik and hoped he would consider the life Christ offers to all of us.  At the end of camp, all the campers received Bibles.  I watched Erik as he received his, and was surprised by his reaction.  He opened it and began pouring over the pages.  He did this longer then anyone else.  I’m not sure what he felt in that moment, but it gave me hope he would continue to open his Bible after he left camp.  I hope for him still.  

This was our english class.  The camp offered three levels of english, with our group being the most advanced.  Our high schoolers instructed, while two missionaries and myself advised.  Teaching the advanced class was difficult.  None of us (aside from the missionaries) had ever taught english before.  If the material was too easy, the campers would lose focus and begin goofing off.  If too difficult, they would do anything to lead us off topic.  Despite the difficulty, our students rose to the challenge.  They showed such great maturity, I sometimes forgot they were still in high school!  One of our main goals was to empower our students to be leaders, teachers, and friends to the German campers.  I am proud to say they excelled in these roles, and more. 

The camp leadership team after our farewell dinner in Cologne!  

As sports activity leader, I though we would spend the majority of our time playing ultimate frisbee, soccer, or classic camp games like capture the flag.  We played a few of these (except soccer, to my surprise we didn’t play at all), but our favorite game ended up being none other then the American Pastime...baseball!  

I never though I would connect with German kids while playing baseball, a game not commonly played in their country.  I’m not exactly sure, but I think it all started with someone randomly slugging tennis balls.  One camper saw this and wanted to give it a try.  One turned into several, and the next thing we knew we had enough players for two full teams.  A couple batting practices later, the campers were excited for an actual game, which we played at the end of the week.  

On a beautiful, 60 degree July evening in western Germany, two teams of fledgling German and American ballplayers took to the field.  Our stadium was little more then an overgrown soccer field, but to us it might as well been Camden Yards.  There were two gloves to share between both teams and we used tennis balls as baseballs.  For reasons I couldn’t fully comprehend, three of my teammates played third base while I was the only one in the outfield!  Townspeople passing by must have though we were crazy!  Of corse, none of that mattered.  Through baseball, God made a way for us to transcend barriers of age, gender, ability, language, nationality, and ideology.  We could all just have fun, be ourselves, and play the game. All was right with the world!

Thank you for taking time to read this story.  I had a wonderful experience and consider myself blessed to have taken part in it.  If you would like to view more pics from our trip, check out my photo site at:
http://eyethehorizon.shutterfly.com/

  

BONUS MATERIAL!!!
As a side project, I though it would be fun to track the real time status of the leaders throughout the trip.  Here we are at the:

BEGINNING

MIDDLE

END

Chus!

Adam Reed