New York Missions Trip 2012

New York. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would have the opportunity to go to Long Island New York for a missions trip.

This past year we have gotten an amazing new pastor at our church. It has been such a joy to have him and his awesome family become the leaders of Grace Baptist Church. Apparently at their last church they had gone and helped this church over in New York with their day camp. Well when they came to Grace they brought that opportunity! Months ago we were planning, getting interviewed and having training classes so that when the last week of July came, we would be prepared. After months of classes, car washes, letters being sent and more fundraisers the time finally came: We were headed to NY! There was 18 teens and 8 adults altogether going on this trip.

All of us teens (minus one) the day we headed out!

Sunday came and we had an awesome time being able to sing for the church's morning service! First the entire Minnesota group sung How Deep The Father's Love For Us and then the teen girls sang an absolutely beautiful and powerful song called Jesus Thank You:

"Your blood as washed away my sin.

Jesus, thank you.

The Father's wrath completely satisfied.

Jesus, thank you.

Once Your enemy, now seated at Your table,

Jesus, thank you!"

That day we just hung out in our rooms and what was called the "Eagles Room" which was a room for the oldest kids of the day camp. That room was equipped with a wii, ping-pong table, nice couches, lots of chairs, pool table, Foosball table, pinball machine and lots of floor space to play serious games of Dutch Blitz!

The next day was when our work really started. The day camp was under way! Let me walk you through a typical day...

9:00 sign in

Parents of the kids would come and sign their kids in. This was a great opportunity to really see the families of some of the kids, and we also made it our goal by the second day to be able to go up to the kids and already have the pen ready for the parents to sign, instead of having the parents having to come to us. That just showed them that we really knew who our kids were and that they weren't just a name on the clipboard, but we knew who they were in person too.

9:15 Welcome, prayer and pledge

This was the time where all the kids were signed in and they were playing where they wanted: four-square, playground or anywhere really on the grounds. After the whistle was blown, the teams would line up and head to the front lawn, where the American flag was proudly centered. The teams would honor the flag with the pledge, bow their head in reverence when the prayer was being said and get ready for the day.

9:30 counselor game time

This was the time where us counselors got the chance to make up a game and to play it with our kids. Most of the time it ended up being free time ;) But there were a few days where we went down to the gym or even played a serious game of TV-tag.

10:00 organized game time

Organized game time was the time where the camp usually had a game prepared for the teams to play. One such day was where we had a serious game of kickball. Let's just say that most of the kids had no idea what was going on, some of the girls didn't want to play, and most of the guys took it very seriously! ;) Then what we did was have the campers vs. the counselors......the poor campers could hardly get to second base! So after quite a few outs we went easy on them a little bit so by the end they had scored a few points. :) Then the counselors were at "bat". And most of the MN counselors are soccer players...I didn't know you could kick a kickball that hard! But by the end we pretty much ran out of time so we just said we tie 67-67! ;)

10:30 free time

Now when we say "free time" we mean the campers can play where they want (within reason!). For our team, the blue team, that always meant a mad dash to the four-square. Ok, to the horror of some of you, I will say that I had never played four-square in my life!  I (honestly!) thought you were just suppose to hit a ball into a square....little did I know that there is SSSOOO much more to it. Do the words Snake Eyes, Watermelon, Chicken Body, Roley-Poley, Fair Game, Ace Calls It, Double-Touch or Spins mean any thing to you? Yah, they didn't to me either ;) It's to hard to explain the game to you over a blog, but just know that four-square is a hard, fun and addicting game! Those kids in NY took the game very seriously and it really showed! They were good! A few times when it got to be a heated argument of whether or not it was out, one of us counselors had to step in and say, "Counselor calls it! Just redo it!" I felt like I had so much power ;)

11:00 1st counselor time

Now, the 1st counselor time was really a time to work on our cheer...Wait, I haven't told you about the cheers yet? Well, Let me explain :) By the end of the week every team was suppose to come up with some type of cheer that they were to do in front of the rest of the groups. Some took a basketball or football cheer and stuck their color in, some (the Eagle girls, who are the oldest girls' group) even took the very famous song Call Me Maybe and completely changed the words and sung that! But most just did an acronym with their team color. And that's also what we did!

B! Cause we are the Best

L! Cause we love the Lord

U! Cause we are United

E! Cause we are Excited

So we shouted that and added some clapping things and there you have it!  We must have done pretty well because we got second! :)

11:30 craft time

I loved craft time! Not only was it a great excuse to go inside to the air-conditioning, but we also got to make lanyards, color, do tie-dye and do puzzles with our campers. My favorite memory from craft time was when all my campers were happy coloring except this one boy. Apparently he didn't want to color, so I sat down next to him and asked what he wanted to do. He didn't know. My brain was going crazy trying to figure out what he could do...then it hit me! I would show him how to play Dots and Boxes! By the end I got that cute smile back on his face and he was having a blast trying to beat me at it. Then another little boy joined in and everyone was happy :)

12:00 lunch

This was that time where all the kids got their lunch and headed to sit somewhere on the grounds. Of course the blue team took over the four-square ;) This is also when the counselors could also take turns and head inside to get our lunch as well. I would like to take a minute to thank all the people who made our lunches! They were absolutely amazing everyday and even some of the kids wanted to trade lunches with me ;)

1:00 song time

After an hour lunch (which ended up being 15 minutes of eating and 45 minutes of four-square...) we headed inside for song time. This was a great time to cool off, sing praises to our Lord and act crazy! Some of the songs I learned over there were just different versions of ones that I already knew. I will definitely be singing these for future AHG meetings, Bible schools and youth groups! It was great to see the kids excited to sing praises to the Lord. Some of the songs were wild and crazy, but some of them were really soft and touching songs. It almost brought tears to my eyes as we sang some of them. All those voices praise God...it really doesn't get any better than that.

1:30 Bible time

Now this is where our job really started. Those teens that had taught at our Vacation Bible School also got to teach here. The lessons those five days walked through the Gospel message from start to finish:

Lesson one: God created everything. It was perfect. God loved His creation.

Lesson two: We wanted to be like God. We obviously can't be and we messed everything up by bringing sin (and thus death) into the world.

Lesson three: In the OT (Old Testament) people brought a perfect male lamb to the temple, laid there hand on it's head (showing that the man's sin was being put on the lamb) and then bringing the lamb to a special place of death, the alter (because the lamb now had the man's sin, it had to die because death is the penalty for sin).

Lesson four: God was going to bring a savior into the world to save us from our sins. Jesus! He came as a boy, was perfect, was wholly God and also fully man.

Lesson five: Jesus was/is our lamb. He was a male, He was perfect, He was brought to a special place of death (the cross) and He died in our place. The third day He rose again and is at the right hand of God even as we speak :) If we trust Him, and Him alone as our savior, if we believe He was who He said He was, that He died in our place and rose again, and that we can't get to Heaven on our own, but only by Jesus Christ, we can be saved!!!

2:00 2nd counselor time

This was an awesome time! We got our groups together and talked about the lesson we had just heard. Many awesome questions came out (about what B.C. means, if God can control the weather, etc.) and we also asked the kids questions too about the lesson to make sure they were really understanding what we were teaching. We also got to share our testimonies, which was an absolute blast to share with these kids what God has done in our lives. And then to top it all off we talked about how they could get saved as well! If they had any questions, we said that they could come find us and talk. Well, in was in this time that I had the amazing opportunity to talk to two girls, walk them through the Gospel, show them how they could be saved and then asked if they wanted to. And thus two girls were added to the family of God!!! :D Altogether eight kids got saved that week and many, many more seeds were planted.

Well, that was the end of the day camp. The parents came, we had a leader meeting, cleaned up and went back up to our rooms. It was an awesome time of getting to know the kids (there likes, dislikes, individual personalities, and where they were spiritually), there families and also the others counselors a little better too.

Our evening were also a time to look forward to! Going into NYC, heading to a wonderful beach, walking to an awesome Italian ice place, eating tons of food, walking around a cute little town (and having fun in the stores too!), and many more things were times that we made many awesome memories as well! Since pictures are suppose to speak a thousand words, I'll let them do the talking! ;)

Confused? Yah, so were we...;)

My first experience with Italian Ice. I am officially hooked!
It was amazingly fresh, delicious and filling!

Had a great opportunity to go to an amazing, and authentic, Italian restaurant.
This was the first course: this beautiful tomato salad

Tried calamari for the first time! Can't say I'm hooked....but it was good!
(if you got past the fact that you were eating squid.......)

The beach was beautiful! The clouds were breath-taking and the water was gorgeous too!

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but once you got
into the water you really felt the power the current and waves had.

Times Square!!!

Apparently this is the official building of ABC news....I don't really
watch the news much, but it was cool to see the building! ;)

Trees in NYC?! I had to take a picture! lol ;)

There was such beautiful architecture on so many of the buildings
in down town NYC.

Grand Central Station! :)

There was an Apple store in Grand Central Station!!! Yah, my thoughts exactly!
But I thought this picture was a cool mix of old and new :)

The famous clock :)

We also had a great time riding on the subway!

This was probably my favorite thing that we got to do: go up on a
forty-two story building! The views were breath-taking! <3

Looking down onto Times Square :)

Beautiful <3

There were tons of cute and quaint things in these little stores.
We had tons of fun going through them :)

I don't know why, but I thought this was really funny! ;)

No day was complete without a stop at at least one Starbucks!

Eight days, eight new members of the family of God and tons of memories later, our trip was over. It was such an amazing opportunity and trip. I shall never forget the smiles on the kids faces, the times we had the chance to share the Gospel and the many friendships we made.

I would tell you about our traveling experiences...but let's just keep it at this: after two delays and two cancelations we finally got home, with these awesome memories still fresh in our mind :)