Week 1: Sunday Night -- Monday

Sunday night when I arrived at the Ranch I was given a tour of the staff area which consists of the tents with carpeted floors and bunk beds that we sleep in, an outhouse, a shower open to the sky, a toothbrushing and hand-washing station, and a covered area with chairs and a plastic picnic table for staff to hang out and have meetings/devotions. I did not have to do much Sunday night besides get settled into my new home.

Monday morning I had to be at Staff Devotions at 7:40am. One of the staff read out of a devotion book, read some scripture, we briefly discussed it, and prayed. Then it was time for breakfast. After breakfast we had a staff planning meeting to get ready for the Nino (there's an imaginary squiggly line over the 2nd "n") groups that were coming in a couple hours. I was helping with the upper camp (we usually have 2 groups: lower camp and upper camp each week) and we did not have an Amigo group with us, so we had more planning to do than the staff helping the other camp.

Our ninos showed up an hour earlier than they were supposed to (10:30am)so the other staff went through the rules with them and then we played games with them until it was time for lunch.

After lunch I tried to keep the kids from hurting themselves or each other while they had some free time. After free time we did some VBS activities that involved a story, a craft, and some games. Ceci, one of the staff, was really fun to watch tell the story (it was about 2 pigs, one arrogant and the other always felt inferior, and how they both experienced God's love), she was so expressive and fun in her delivery. During this time I became acutely aware of how the difficult the language barrier was going to be.

That afternoon the kids took showers and then we fed them dinner (there are ladies that come in from Ensenada that do the cooking...we just passed out the plates, wiped down the tables, etc.). Then they had some more free time, during which I got a break while another staff watched the kids. And, finally, we had a campfire for the ninos during which they sang songs and shared their favorite part of the day. The campfires were always fun. It's neat to watch kids sing worship songs in another language. I'm slowly learning the lyrics to a couple of the songs.

I went to bed not long after the campfire. I was pretty tired between the time change and the busy-ness. It was an interesting first day.