Last night Liam and Robin danced to the 80s song “Mister Roboto”. Liam was horribly embarrassed, but I have rarely heard such applause. We learned last night that perhaps “Narnia” is a bit too scary to show to 9 year old girls. They kept leaving the dining hall during the movie when there was a frightening part. Aliva and Jill were there to comfort them. We were afraid that some of them would have nightmares and wake up even earlier than 3:30 am, but everyone was pretty quiet until 6:00 am. We really must have worn them out the day before!

This is our last day of camp until next weekend. The kids are going home at 2:00. After they leave we will give our students a little time off to swim and relax. We are going to leave at 4:30 to go to a restaurant in Rivas for dinner. Then we will come back to the camp for a little studying time.

Hannah had some interesting observations. She has been a camper herself at Chop Point and she said,

“I have a new found respect for counselors. I never realized before what a hard job it is. I am surprised by how tiring it is, but at the same time I am having so much fun! At Chop Point, I was always a little suspicious that the counselors were ‘just doing their job’ when they seemed to like their campers. I wondered if they were reading from some script. But now I understand how much they truely liked us. Being a counselor is too hard of a job to ‘fake’.”

I thought that was very insightful and a great observation by Hannah.

I looked over at Jill at dinner last night and she looked like she could fall asleep in her chair. I aked her if she was OK and she said “tired but happy”.

Our students are now in morning group meeting and they are having the campers memorize John 3:16. They are also acting out the parable of the Prodigal Son. We will soon break-up into groups and have several morning activity periods. Two years ago, we purchased and brought down 6 microscopes. We are going to use them this morning in science class to look at sand that we make after shaking rocks in a bottle. In English we are learning parts of the body and colors. In arts & crafts they have broken out the crayons and are writing their names and decorating them. The boys on the beach are playing “Pickle”.

Since Ortega has become President of Nicaragua, the country is getting more organized. We used to be able to approach individual schools and have them cancel school for the week and come to the camp. The new superintendent now is asking that we put together a proposal so that they can know whether the camps we are running are educational. Adam and Jonathan have been taking pictures and videos and are going to put a media presentation together so that we can run camps during the week and not just on the weekends. Nicaraguans love paper work and proposals, so we will jump through whatever hoops we need to continue our work.

- The Group

P.S. As I am sending this pre-typed email out from my house, I thought I would take some photos off of my digital camera and post them online to those who would like to check them out. They’re from the last few days of camp. We had a good dinner in town tonight and the team headed back to do some homework and most likely go to bed early. I saw some tears today from the students as the local kids headed home on the bus. I’m still a young buck myself but I felt very proud of our students in a “parental” sort of way. They have all stepped up to the challenge and have done such a fantastic job. Keep us in your prayers. - Adam