{"id":1659,"date":"2012-06-16T19:37:38","date_gmt":"2012-06-17T02:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/?p=1659"},"modified":"2012-06-16T19:37:38","modified_gmt":"2012-06-17T02:37:38","slug":"vanguard-getting-ready-for-the-second-week-of-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/vanguard-getting-ready-for-the-second-week-of-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanguard: Getting ready for the second week of camp."},"content":{"rendered":"

One week of ministry has ended with immense enthusiasm, while another waits. The first week at the TB Center encompassed the establishment of our Olympics theme, which involved having the children make Olympic rings, which were then hung up around the activities room. We also built up joy and excitement among them through a number of outside games, including relays and some of their own games graciously taught to us. Accompanying the Olympic theme came Biblical lessons dealing with the Creation account and the story of King David. Because of the limited attention span of the younger kids (which encompass the majority of children at the center), we came prepared with many craft ideas to eat up time. The children responded with gusto to the opportunity to make crowns to wear, just like King David. And\u00a0 honestly, we enjoy craft time quite a bit as well.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But our focus is of course not solely on the younger kids. Three members of our team, Joey, Melanie, and David, have been specifically speaking to the older children in the TB Center, ranging from ten to seventeen. While the younger ones tend to openly jump into our arms and participate with enthusiasm, getting the older kids to open up has proven to be a bit more of a challenge. However, our three persistent team members have done an exceptional job reaching out to these young adults, expressing their willingness to give them attention and love. In the older sessions, topics such as peer pressure have been addressed, while the team has also taken time to play some \u201cice-breakers\u201d to get them to open up a little more. And while certain teens from troubled backgrounds still try to pull away from fully engaging, progress is being made and we trust God to continue to open up their hearts.<\/p>\n

All in all, it is incredible to think that we have only spent five days playing hot potato, making bracelets, chasing rambunctious balls of energy, teaching our favorite Bible stories, and, most importantly, just giving these children the love they need. Too many of these young ones come from a troubled background.\u00a0 As we learn their stories, it breaks our hearts because we know that not a single child in this center deserves anything less than complete affection. It is frustrating to think that they come from such sorrow, as we know how incredible each one is. It is amusing to think that such strong emotions and attachments have developed after only a week! But that is what makes us so excited to spend another week ministering to these youth. The following week will include special delights such as a trip to an amusement park as well as a boat ride. We hope and pray that the excitement and fun does not diminish, but only gets more powerful!<\/p>\n

It pains us to know that after this week we will have to say our goodbyes to these wonderful people who we already love so much. But we trust that God\u2019s influence will not cease in the clinic. We pray that these young ones remember us long after we leave, but more importantly that they never relinquish the knowledge of Christ\u2019s love. We see our powerful Savior doing incredible things and we know He will continue what he has started in these young hearts. As always, we implore you all to keep us in prayer as we not only engulf in a new week of fun adventures, but also deal with what is sure to be a difficult farewell. But please take heart when we say that the positive influences we have on these children, as well as how much they impact us, far outweigh the sorrow and we are all thrilled in regards to this stupendous ministry we have found ourselves involved in. Thank you all for your enormous support and please continue to pray for continual growth and safety throughout this final week. May God bless you tremendously as you await our joyous return with lots of stories and jubilee!\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On a final note, we would like to wish \u201cHappy Father\u2019s Day\u201d to all of our dads! Thank you for your love and support throughout all of our successes and failures. We pray that this day brings you great joy and comfort in hearing of our safety and success. God bless and have a wonderful day!<\/p>\n

Vanguard Team, written by Vasili<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One week of ministry has ended with immense enthusiasm, while another waits. The first week at the TB Center encompassed the establishment of our Olympics theme, which involved having the children make Olympic rings, which were then hung up around the activities room. We also built up joy and excitement among them through a number of outside games, including relays and some of their own games graciously taught to us. Accompanying the Olympic theme came Biblical lessons dealing with the Creation account and the story of King David. Because of the limited attention span of the younger kids (which encompass \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[78,79,82],"tags":[92,33,35,38,41,57,62,71],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sunergos-ministry","category-teams-2","category-vanguard-teams-2","tag-camps","tag-missions","tag-novgorod","tag-orphans","tag-russia","tag-sunergos","tag-tb-center","tag-vanguard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Vanguard-camp-3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2j3in-qL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1659"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}