Mary:

• Focused on the most important–worshiping God (Christ). Luke 10:38-42
• Faithful in trials. John 11:21-40
• Forsook her greatest possession. Mark 14:3

Judas:

• Criticized intimate worship. Mark 14:4
• Complained about God’s work. Mark 14:4. 5
• Confided with wicked people. Mark 14:10, 11

What struck me is that while many look at missionaries and think that we are willing to give up many things to go live on a foreign field, most of us don’t see that as a hardship. However, we struggle with giving up some things. Maybe your struggle is the thought of giving up regular electricity, or moving away from family. We do give up those things, but personally my struggles are in giving up things of even lesser value.

I don’t think I fall into the category of a Judas, but I am not sure I am a Mary either. Sure, I am willing to give up some comforts to be a missionary, but am I willing to forsake what I see as materialistically important? I am not sure I am there yet.

The reason for doing a video version is that many of our friends are Deaf. This would allow them to get content in their language while still making it accessible for the hearing. Meaning that I would both sign and speak each one of the updates.

I don’t plan on this being a traditional podcast in that I will provide content that the general public might want to consume. Rather it will be simple, short updates about what is going on with us.

What do you think? I know that those who pray for us would like more regular content so that they know how better to pray. Is this the best way to deliver that content? I have intentionally avoided using my prayer letter mailing list as an “update” medium. I would rather those who are more connected with us go to the website and get that additional information. Do you agree?

**What is meant by “podcast”? This is a format for providing content that the “subscriber” can receive automatically via software that grabs the new information when it is available. All the content will be available at the website to view on-line, but by making it a podcast that simply means that the user could go to one piece of software to consume all the content, i.e., iTunes.

My fortune: What are you waiting for? Start moving now.

I have been somewhat discouraged by my laziness in exercising and staying in shape. While I am doing much better than most, I definitely know I am not where I should be, nor where I want to be. My fortune yesterday was appropriate in that it gave me a little kick in the pants to get motivated and moving. The last 5 years I have harped on the fact that if you will simply get up and move a little bit more today than you did yesterday, you are taking a step in the right direction to get in shape and be healthier. While I still believe that, I have had trouble motivating myself to stay aggressive in my movement. Maybe this is just what I needed.

My wife’s fortune: Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

As an interpreter (of many things), I am constantly involved in the struggle of making sure something in one language (concept, culture, story) is completely understood in the other language with the same intent and feeling as it had originally. While I don’t know that it takes a genius to transmit information from one medium to another, it certainly is taxing on the mental capacities. When you can take something that is not understood by one person or group and interpret it in such a way that they “get it” then you are displaying an ability that many others do not have.

We will be there for 3 nights. I am the guest speaker this year. Since I have been gone a year (we left a week after camp last year) then I get to be the special guest. I am still doing basically the same things I did last year except I didn’t have to do as much of the planning. Can’t get much better than that. Well, it could. I could be given special napping privileges while everyone else is outside playing in the sun. But, alas, I get to help run the games too.

So, while I have now committed to being a better blogger, I step away from the Internet for a few days. Look forward to some pictures this weekend.

We started the week with about 80 campers. This grew all week with our final count up to 95. That is a good number landing right in our average range of campers. I am always amazed as to how many people come to camp based on how poorly we advertise. Out of the group of missionaries that have mostly been there the last 5 years, only 4 of the group of 10 were able to be there. We had plenty of help and teachers though since we mostly have the pastors and their wives do the teaching.

We probably had 15 people who had never been to camp before. One man from the state of Hidalgo (a new group this year) accepted the Lord as his savior. There were also 2 hearing men who surrendered to service.

Wednesday was our “battle day.” We had a dog bite, a lady step on a nail, a man get stomach cramps bad enough to justify an emergency room visit. There were three trips to the doctor for various reasons. Dissension in the camp among 2 groups grew to a head, however, as camp director I did not know anything about it until late that night. I was able to resolve it, in a way, on Thursday morning. While it seemed everything might fall apart on Wednesday, that was the day that the one man was saved. Everything worked out fine by Friday. I think we were all friends again by the time we parted ways.

Friday I was asked if I could take 3 people to the bus station. This is the first year that I have not been in a hurry to get away from camp. I got everyone off and started the trip to the bus station. My 3 had grown to 10. I took them and they said that there were still 7 more that needed a ride. I returned for the next group to find out that there were 9 more after that. On three trips to the buses I hauled 26 people in my van with only 3 seats. The back end was full of luggage. Only in Mexico can you pack 9 people at a time in 3 seats.

We took our time getting away from camp since we have no particular time schedule to get anywhere. The only town on our route that was of any size was only 1 hour away. We got into town in search of a hotel that had certain amenities. I turned down one hotel because of not having all we wanted. Every other hotel we found was full to capacity. I finally returned to the first place (almost 2 hours later) and they only had one room left, but their Internet connection was out. I have already been a week without Internet and if I am taking the next few days like they were a vacation, I really want some communication abilities.

The reason all the hotels are full has to do with this being the weekend between the 2 big summer vacation weeks in Mexico. We are also in La Huasteca region. It would be like Yellowstone NP to US citizens.

We finally found a hotel that had a room available. Our casual evening in town to relax and eat at a fancy restaurant and get some reading done ended up with us grabbing a greasy chicken from a grocery store and eating it in our room at 9:30 at night. Rarely is anything as easy as it seems it should be.

After Gettysburg we spend a few days in Syracuse, New York with some dear friends. He is the pastor of a deaf church and president of a mission board. I was privileged to preach for him on the Wednesday night that we were there. We have always loved his church people and the fellowship we have with them. Bro. Steve took us to a science museum one day while we were there. Steve is a geek from the 50s. As a child he attended a special session for electronic engineers on transistors when they first came out. He has been a hardware hacker ever since. The science museum turned him into a kid with the rest of us.

After NY we were back in PA for the camp that I was speaking at. It is a camp for children (hearing) ages 7 to 12. Not my favorite group to work with. But the beauty of this camp was that I was just the speaker. I only had to show up for my sessions and was not expected to entertain the children the whole time. Thank the Lord.

It was a wonderful week. There were at least 7 who accepted the Lord as their Savior.

From Sunday to Sunday that week I spoke in 13 different services at 7 different venues! Busy. I also coordinated getting some body work done on our van after our neighbor in Florida backed into it. How many weeks ago were we in Florida? Well, it didn’t get fixed immediately after the crash, but we got it fixed that week in PA.

We made the long trip from northern PA to Pensacola, FL in a day and a half. This allowed us to be home 3 full days and a partial day to get ready for the next month long trip. During that week we put 2 new tires on the van, installed a transmission cooler and air bags for our rear springs. The cooler and air bags are to help with having to tow a trailer out of Mexico with the things we are bringing home.

Friday afternoon we left FL and bedded down in LA. Saturday from Baton Rouge to McAllen (border town) TX. Sunday I preached in a church in McAllen and then prepared the final things we needed to cross the border into Mexico. The crossing went very well and now we are in a hotel a couple of hours south of the border. We are only about 3 hours away from our destination tomorrow which is the start of our northern Mexico deaf camp.

We will be at camp for a week and then drive to Merida (where we lived the last 4 years). In Merida we will be selling/packing/giving away stuff that we had stored there. Then we have another week of deaf camp in the Yucatan area of Mexico. It will be tough saying good-bye to everyone this time. We know we are not going to be coming back any time soon. Last year when we left we knew we would be back this summer. But now that time is upon us and we will say our “farewells” this time around.

In some ways it seems we are coming home. In 16 years of marriage we have never spent so much time in one place as we have the city of Merida. Even though we were at the Bill Rice Ranch for 6 years, we traveled 9 months of the year. With the exception of a couple of weeks each summer, we have lived in Merida year round for 4 years. It is certainly home for our children and home for us. Will be fun being back there, but tough to leave this time around.

I better be careful or I will get all drippy eyed.

The pastor was supposed to be working on my ride. At 9:00 Friday night I asked him who was taking me to the airport. Somehow something so important to me did not seem that important to him. It slipped his mind. Fortunately Raul, one of the two men who was a possible driver, happened to be at the church with us that night. The pastor got it all lined out.

I told the other missionary who my driver would be. By his immediate reaction I knew I was in trouble. The missionary said that this man thinks nothing wrong with showing up to an event an hour and a half late. Something I could not afford.

Since Raul lived an hour away from the church that would mean he had to leave his house at 4:00 to come and get me. What were the chances of that working out? At the pastor’s suggestion Raul decided to sleep at the church with us and then go home after taking me to the airport.

A major birthday party was taking place at the church the next day for Raul’s daughter. I finally kicked the decorating crew out of the church building a little after 1:00 am so I could go to bed. I have no idea when Raul went to sleep. I slept from 1:30 to 4:45 and had the great joy of awakening my driver a couple minutes before 5:00.

A little trouble getting Raul’s wife from the girl’s sleeping area and finding the keys to the gate so we could leave and we were off.

A few blocks into the trip and Raul asked me if I was in a hurry. I said that I needed to be at the airport at 6:00. Whatever that took. He decided we were in a hurry. We took off and my seat tipped backwards. Quite a feat for a 30 year old Volkswagen Rabbit. We sped down the major north-south road in town flashing our lights at any car that was somewhat close to us warning them to get out of the way. We could not make a left hand turn at the intersection we wanted so he turned right onto a one way street going against us. Raul executed a nice U-turn and sent us off the direction of the airport.

I asked him to stop at an OXXO so I could get a cup of coffee (and steady my nerves). It took a few minutes to pour up the coffee and grab his wife a Coke.

When we got close to the airport there were speed bumps. My seat that tilted backwards every time we accelerated also slid violently forward when he slammed on his brakes for that first speed bump. “Knees, meet dashboard.”

Even with the stop at OXXO for the coffee I was at the airport in just over 30 minutes. Some of the time was made up because of there not being much traffic at 5:00 in the morning. But the rest of it was clearly due to some wild driving. I guess I don’t mind it so much if I am the one behind the wheel, but sitting helplessly in the passenger’s seat makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Whew!

Some of the men at the meeting with me had mattresses. They were all claimed by someone else before I got a chance to grab one. Fortunately I had a sleeping bag (albeit a very thin one) to sleep on. One of the missionary ladies tossed in a comforter she had as extra padding. Traveling light, I did not have a pillow. My zippered hoodie, stuffed with clothes, served as a pillow for the week.

It was very musical in the church too. All the men seemed to snore on a different key. Quite a chorus. My friend Gary kindly provided a set of earplugs to use the rest of the week. I was thankful.

One of our cooks was arriving on Tuesday morning (our first morning) but did not have keys to the gate. She honked her horn at 6:30 (after a bed time of close to 2:00 am) to get someone to open the gate for her. Did I mention this was a group of Deaf I was with? Gary and I were the only ones who heard the honking. I decided to let him take care of it and I slipped back into dream land.

The second morning I was up before the cook arrived. This time her brother was supposed to have the key when he dropped her off. He forgot it at home. One thing I get great enjoyment from is waking people up. I had the privilege of waking the pastor from the floor of the church to get the keys.

The third morning the keys were not to be found. I got to wake the pastor once again, but this time the keys were not with him. He sent me upstairs to look in the kitchen. I did not find them there. The pastor had to get totally up this time and search for 30 minutes until they were located.

Friday the head cook did not come. That was too bad. It could be the explanation as to why we did not have breakfast served until 11:30 that morning. Fortunately there was plenty of coffee and cookies to keep me alive.

I had to leave by 5:00 Saturday morning. This meant that I could not use my earplugs and still hear my alarm. Since I did not get to settle into my spot on the floor until 1:30, that meant for a short final night. The lack of earplugs did not affect me negatively though. I was so tired that I did not hear any snoring.

By the way, after about 3 nights on the floor, you get used to it. I don’t think it has ever taken me more than 4 nights to get to where I was sleeping well. It is not as horrible as it sounds.

There is a group of missionaries and national pastors working with the Deaf in Mexico that gets together a couple of times each year to fellowship and learn from one another. This trip was the normal fellowship time coupled with our planning meeting for camp this summer. This always takes place between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. That is the week that virtually all Mexicans who work regular jobs are given time off. It is easy for the pastors and church leaders to travel to the meeting even if they are working outside the church.

We had a great time of fellowship. There were 3 national pastors as well as another national who is not the pastor of his church, but teaches the Deaf in the church’s ministry. Then there were 2 missionaries present. There were several others who were in and out of the meetings as church leaders and close friends of the ministries represented. But the main ones were the 6 of us present really just to spend time learning from one another and encouraging the pastors.

We also spent a couple of days planning for our upcoming camp. The camp will be in July. The camp facility that had casually been considered was not available the week we needed. We were able to confirm another location that we have used in the past and everyone likes.

I knew there were some grumblings of serious problems. I had no idea what they were or who they effected. Because of this, the other missionary paid most of my airfare to get me down there and made sure that I had my hand involved in the planning of camp. I am the camp director (for this final year), but felt like things could be handled without me. As it turns out, everything was handled well by one of the pastors.  I let him take control and was pleased to know that the camps will be just fine without me in the future.

The problems were never fully revealed to me until the last night of the meeting. What seemed destructive on Monday turned out to be just a misunderstanding of an outside party who innocently spread some information inaccurately. For whatever reason, this information was withheld from me until the end. I think it worked out for the best. There was no need for confrontation and conflict.

It was a great week, but I had a couple of nights that were about 3 hours long. I am ready for some rest.

This week we are in a conference at a church in Ringgold, GA. This is a church that I have been part of in a small way since its inception. A friend of mine started a Bible college for the Deaf in 1994. The school was connected to a local church and did well in the church. After some time though, they felt they needed more room for their own church services because they were growing bigger than the hearing church could accommodate. I am not sure what year they started having services on their own, but they have been an organized church for quite some time now.

In 2001 we were at this church for their missions conference. They were growing well, but still at the early stages of growth. Now the church has several missionaries that they support and some which are sent out from this ministry. We have had well around 200 each night for the conference.

Many of the missionaries and staff at the church and school are old friends of ours. It is great to get together with them and share stories and catch up on old times.

When this is over I will be flying to Guadalajara, Mexico. I may or may not be able to blog from there. But rest assured, I am working and not just going there for vacation. You believe me, right? I know, how can someone go to a beautiful place like Guadalajara and call it work? I will try.

I know when people make a comment about my work being satisfying they are talking about the social good that I do amongst the Deaf. They are assuming that the purpose and goal of my ministry is to help the perceived needs of the Deaf. In third world countries these needs might include help learning job skills and communication. One thing I have done in Mexico to further my goal was to work in a school for the Deaf. At the school I taught physics and math. I also had some classes on social skills and general manners. Mostly I taught basic forms of English (which I always thought was the craziest thing since they didn’t even know Spanish). But none of that was my ultimate goal. Those were simply a means to an end.

So what is my goal and from what do I draw my satisfaction in my work?

My goal is to see the Deaf accept Christ as their Savior. The reason is they need someone to save them from the wrath of God against their personal sin. The Deaf, like the rest of us, have one dominant problem: sin.

We don’t need a Savior to give us a better life. We don’t need Him to help us have a better job. Nor do we need Christ to solve any problems we might have. These MAY be a result of salvation and living a life based on biblical principles, but they are not the goal.

Sure, I get satisfaction from my work. But my satisfaction does not come when a person learns to read or gets a job. My satisfaction comes when I see a person accept Christ for who He is: a Savior from their sins and punishment in Hell. While God may grant them a better place in society, that is not my job nor my passion.

I own 2 Twitter accounts if you want to follow me. The first one is the one I have been using for a year and a half. That one is the username dpeach. That has mostly been tied in closely with my running buddies. I have a few people who follow me there who do not run, but my main following is made up of people who run and are interested in running news.

My second, and new as of tonight, Twitter account is DavidPeach. I am going to use this one as more ministry related content. I may still post some things about my running, but I plan to make it more about our ministry.

As we explore different ways to help missionaries stay more connected to the people in the churches, this has come to my mind as a great opportunity. My friend Jeff at Missionary Geek and I have talked in the past about using social networking as a way to engage our supporters. I have dismissed much of it because of the problem I see of allowing other people to view my connections. Sometimes, sad as it is, I have been told that I would, or would not be, supported based on who I would be working with. I could understand if the problem was doctrinal, but it never is. First off, I am not going to seek support from a church that I cannot agree with doctrinally. It is always based on personalities or quirkiness that really does not matter in the big picture. Therefore, I have avoided using social networking as a means to communicate with my supporters.

My mind has been steered with the help of some of the people whom I follow on Twitter. The main one being Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson. I have followed him for 2 months. In that time he has told me what new books Thomas Nelson is publishing; he had informed me that they have changed the dress code at the office; and, I know when he plays golf even. Does any of that really matter? Not if I am thinking about what book I would purchase from them. But what it does do is put Thomas Nelson constantly on my mind. That is exactly what I want from people who say they are praying for me and my ministry as well as supporting me financially. I want them to think about me constantly. I want them to know I am a real person who struggles with the same things they do. I think Twitter can deliver that.

Now you can follow one, or both, of my accounts. There may be some cases where I would cross post between accounts, but mainly the DavidPeach account will be ministry related and dpeach will be everything else.

We were in a little village not too far from the big city doing another camp for the Deaf. This time it was just the Deaf from our church in Merida. We would like to expand this to include all of the Yucatan Deaf. But at this point we are the only Christian ministry for the Deaf that we are aware of.

Camp
Tuesday
Before picking people up to head to camp, I had to swing by the immigration office to fill out the paperwork to cancel our visas. We will be leaving the country in less than 2 weeks. I got out of the immigration office much later than planned and started my rounds of getting everyone to the church.

Camp started well and we were able to run some events and give out medals that first night. We had an obstacle course. I was not in the competition for a medal, but I did run the course in the second fastest time. I lost to a 17 year old. I was pleased.

We had a good service that night with Bill, the pastor of our church, speaking.

Wednesday
I preached both services on Wednesday. We had some good games with no major injuries. That is always good.

Thursday
Bill preached both services on Thursday. We took the whole group to the beach. The girls went to one side of the world’s longest pier and the boys went to the other. I have never been to the beach in Progreso when it has been so nice. There was hardly any wind and the water was clear enough we could see our feet. That is special.

Friday
I preached the final service. My son took the Gold medal in scripture memory. We gave out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for the team competition. By doing that, we were assured that everyone would get a medal. We happened to have 2 Golds left over so we gave them to the cooks.

Running
Wednesday
I ran 4.66 miles. It was from the town we were in, Chablecal, through the town of Dzibilchaltún and just a little past that. Then turn around and back to camp. I did not sleep well that night before. In fact, it may be better said that I did not sleep. I was pleased with my distance and pace despite the lack of sleep.

I noticed that there were a lot of bikes and few cars that I saw on my trip back to the village where we were in camp. They were headed to the big city where we lived.

Friday
I did not really plan to run on Friday, but would do so if I woke up in time. I did, so I did. I ran just 2.32 miles. It was the same route from Wednesday, but I turned around earlier. This time, though, I took note of the number of vehicles I saw on the road. There were 23 bicycles, 9 motorcycles/scooters, and 6 cars. You can tell from this that we were not in a very wealthy place.

I took my camera and snapped a shot of the road I ran on. It was very narrow.

Bananas
We have 2 bunches of bananas growing in the field next door. I chopped one bunch down yesterday after we got back from camp. There are close to 200 bananas on it. The second bunch will have to be harvested after we leave.

We are going with an Olympic theme for obvious reasons. We have a few events that we will borrow from the real games to play out in our own setting. We also have medals that we will present the winners. The medals are all identical, but the ribbons will indicate Gold, Silver and Bronze.

We will use a hula hoop to play discus. This should be pretty easy for the less physically capable.

Shot put might be a bit tougher. The shots will be water balloons. There might just happen to be a few people who get hit with these. Certainly a lot less painful than a 16 lb. shot.

Archery will be performed with darts and balloons.

The Triathlon will be a combination of three common items: jump rope, hula hoop and baseball bat. The jump rope will be used to jump while moving from one point to another. The hula hoop will be rolled along a designated path. The bat will be at the end of a run. The contestant has to put their head on the bat and spin around 10 times and then try to make their way back to the finish line. A timed event of course.

One of the unique events we will be doing is a team standing long jump. This will be a relay type event. The team members will be in a line in which the person at the front of the line will take a standing long jump. The rest of the team will move up to the landing spot and the next member takes their jump. This continues until all team members have a chance to jump. The team that jumps farthest overall will win.

There are a few other events planned, but that is the idea of our games.

We are expecting about 20 people at camp to make all this happen.

Camp
The reason we were in Monterrey a couple of weeks ago was to head up our Deaf camp in the northern part of Mexico. It is called Campamento Henson named after Missionary Ron Henson who worked many years with the Deaf in Monterrey and Guadalajara as well as many other places in Mexico. I have been the director for the last 3 years. That just means that I get to be the one to make the final decision and feel the pressure when things go wrong. For the most part, this camp just runs itself. Many of the people who go to camp have been going for more than 10 years.

Location
This year we were in a bind in that the camp we had reserved did not have us written down for the right dates. That caused us to have to look for a new camp location. By the time I finally got one nailed down, it was well into the new year. We were very grateful for the location we were able to get

This location was nice in that it was nearer to many of the churches than we have been in the past. We had people from 11 different cities at camp. The camp site was also at 7000′ elevation. That meant that it was much cooler than we experience here at sea level in the south. They have snow 6 months out of the year in the area. Unfortunately, this is not one of those months. One night it got down to the low 50s. That is not too terribly cold, but the rooms we stayed in are not sealed for the cold weather. It was like sleeping in a tent. I think most people enjoyed the change since most everyone is experiencing much warmer summer temperatures at this time.

Results
There were 109 campers and 7 accepted the Lord as Savior. It was a very successful week along those lines. We had churches that brought quite a few more campers this year than in the past because the distance was changed in their favor. There were almost 20 campers more this year than our previous high year of recent camps.

Tight Quarters
The camp ground that we used was well equipped for 70 people, but we had 109! There was plenty of space in the auditorium and dining areas, but there just were not enough beds. The camp is still in the process of building. They have plans for another dorm which will add 25 more beds. As it was we had several people sleeping on the floor in the dorms. Some of us slept on tables in the dining room. I am disappointed that one of our churches was not able to come, but I am also not sure where we would have housed another 20+ people.

Activities and Staff
We had some fun activities. We were able to go on a hay ride and play on a zip line. For me it was my first experience with a zip line. It was fun.

The staff at the camp was great. Though there were some struggles with the facilities being too small and not having enough water to keep us well cleaned, I cannot praise the staff enough. We have been at other locations  where the staff was very helpful and we were told that if we needed anything to let them know. At this camp though, the staff stood around and said “What can I do for you right now?” A small difference, but it was very noticeable. The camp owner/director even offered to do a craft project with the campers. That was a blessing since one of our big activities each year is the daily craft. But because of some people not being able to make the trip, we did not have enough crafts planned. The camp director had no idea that we were needing help with a craft, yet he was there to step in and take up the slack just by offering.

Some Struggles
There was not enough water. They truck in about 1500 gallons of water a day. That is cheaper than drilling their own well. But, for the number of people we had there, the amount of water was not enough.

One of our main preachers has been under the weather and was not able to come. I knew a couple weeks in advance that there was a possibility of his absence. But it was not confirmed until the day before camp started.

Another preacher informed me 3 days before that he would not be able to make it. His problem was that his transportation fell through. We were able to route some other people through his area (several hours out of their way) to pick him up and bring he and his wife. That was a huge help.

One of my teachers was not able to make it. She was going to be teaching the ladies each morning. Camp started on Monday evening. I did not know for sure until mid-morning Tuesday that she was not going to be with us.

To get the week started, I was about 2 hours late arriving at the camp ground because the group I was riding with had a van break down. That 2 hours was something that I struggled all week to recover. It seemed to never happen. We have mostly done well in the past with keeping things on schedule and getting the activities started on time. Starting everything late on the first night set the atmosphere for the week. Most of the services started 5 to 20 minutes late. When you are trying to pack in as many events as you can in a short period of time, it is important that you keep things on schedule. Many of the speakers are used to preaching in their churches where there is no time limit, but unfortunately we have to set limits while at camp. It was not unusual for me to have to stand at the back of the auditorium and signal to a preacher that he had to cut it short because he overshot his time by 30+ minutes. Personally, if I cannot say what I want to say in 30 minutes, then I am trying to say too much. When you preach for more than an hour and still have to be cut off by the man in charge, then you are definitely trying to say too much.

There were some stressful times trying to adjust the schedule for all the changes.

Finances
We were also several hundred dollars short on being able to pay for the camp. This is something we have never had a problem with since I have been running the camp. But through a long series of events here and there, we ended up short. Fortunately, God showed His hand of control and power and we were able to leave the camp owing nothing.

Conclusion
It was a very mixed bag of emotions throughout the week. Some very wonderful things took place as well as some tough and stressful events. Fortunately there were no life threatening issues that we had to deal with. I have gone through that before, and it is not an experience a camp director ever wants to repeat.

Next year I will not be in the country to work out all the details of camp. I am still planning to be very involved, but am glad to push some of the detailed responsibility off on one of the national pastors. I will be at camp to deal with problems and inevitable crises, but when things go right I will be able to point to the national and thank him for the great work he did leading into camp.

From a final result point of view, the camp was extremely successful. From my point of view I went into this camp the least organized I have ever been. The fact that it was pulled off so well is a testament to the great national pastors and missionaries who have been doing it so long they just rolled with the punches. I am personally embarassed by the behind the scenes mess that I seemed to constantly struggle with, but am thankful that no one but me really saw the fragility of my house of cards. I have kept you in the dark on so many other issues that I did not even cover in this post..

I thank God we were able to see 7 people saved and church people encouraged to go home and have a stronger personal relationship with the Lord.