We got back from the village and had a full day to rest
before what has become known as “Extreme Death Fish Camping”, originally
“Extreme Fish Camping”, the death part we didn’t know about until we got
there. There wasn’t as much rest
as I would have liked because Alex and I had to go on the hunt for a way to get
to Bucharest Romania, our next place of ministry. After finding out it is literally impossible to take a train
from Odessa, to Bucharest because of some dispute between Ukraine and Moldova
rail systems, so we thought about bussing it. That’s what we were going with, bus to Chisinau Moldova,
then get on a train. Instead, by
suggestion form our squad leader, we went 9 hours back to Kiev, then got on a
train with 4 other teams for a total of about 38 hours on a train. Now, about hour 33, we’re somewhere in
Romania after several stops for passport/visa checks and to get our wheels
changed (different sized tracks in Romania). The countryside is beautiful, sunflowers everywhere, small
villages and farms between rolling hills.
Very nice, but I digress.
Extreme
Death Fish Camping, a camp they put on for kids. Alex, Carrie and I got up early to help the Ukrainians set
up the camp. They said to be ready
at 6am, but we didn’t leave until about 730, typical Ukrainian fashion, always
late. We ride about an hour out of
Odessa to a smaller village, then took a left somewhere straight into a field
then just off-roaded it till we get close to a lake right off the Black
Sea. They handed us a shovel and
told us to go dig a whole for what I thought was going to be the bathroom. So Im picking out places to dig this
whole, and the lady that came with us kept telling me the places I chose
weren’t good. She picks out a spot
in the middle of an open field and starts to dig a whole. I have no idea what she is
thinking. Turns out we are
supposed to dig out a big square to make a mud pit. Im still lost at this point.
About
3 hours later we’re dying of thirst and hot as can be trading off digging
shifts. I go back to the camp to
get some water. I find that the
kids have arrived with the rest our team.
I ask someone on our team for water and they inform me that all of the
water and anything that anyone brought was taken and they couldn’t get it
back. One of the Ukrainian tells
me to go get Alex and Carrie because the first activity is about to start. Luckily I got some water out of her.
They
place us all with the kids on two different teams, they say allot of words I
don’t understand and then we start walking to the beach. They put us in line and the kids, to
the best of their ability, try to tell us whats going on. They tie our legs together and we have
to hop down the beach to this locked box, unlock it, get the knife out, quickly
cut ourselves free, then swim out into the sea and dive to find our water
supply that they have conveniently sunk to the bottom. Both teams always got what they needed,
but the winner of the race would get a bonus round. They would have to do something else to get the special
whatever. It was usually a bottle
of coke or something like that, pure gold for us world racers.
The
next activity involved our mysterious mud pit. We lined up with our teams and were given a bucket of food
that had to be transported from one end of the mud pit to the other one item at
a time. They strung up some lines
that had to be crawled under and the first team to finish got the bonus round,
a bottle of coke buried in the mud pit; this was our lunch.
Every
meal required earning it in a similar way to this. For breakfast we had to race to the top of this huge cliff
and then back down. This was
probably the most dangerous. It
was real steep and there were some ridges on the way down that if you missed a
step you could definitely eat it and probably break a bone. One of our girls hurt her ankle and it
swelled up pretty good. Almost
everyone fell, one kid face first into the ground, I laughed, but it looked
pretty painful.
Extreme
Death Camp, while extreme and somewhat deadly, turned out to be a pretty good
experience, at least by my opinion.
I got to cook most of the meals over an open fire, the kids fished with
a drag net and caught some shrimp and some fish that they cooked and shared
with us. I ate a pregnant shrimp
with all the little baby eggs on its belly. There are more stars in Eastern Europe than in the states,
or at least I have never seen as many as I did those two nights at camp. We got to beg for money in the market
of that town (a part of one of the challenges). Got to sing our national anthem in a Ukrainian bus
stop. Watch the sun set (around
1030pm) over the part of the Black Sea.
So many other things
The camp is designed to start a
relationship with these kids, because this month (July) and the next they will
have two other camps that will be more discipleship led with bible studies and
preaching and teaching and whatnot.
At night we sat around a fire and played a few games that led to a
discussion about relationships, what all kids that age like to talk about. Our translator helped us in the
discussions and we got to share our hearts on the views of Godly relationships,
hopefully planting some seeds to be watered at the camps to come. It was a solid weekend that turned out
to be pretty good. The only
trouble I think we had is that we didn’t feel like we knew what was going
on. Much like the village, it
wasn’t until things were happening that we knew what Extreme Fish Camping
actually was. It was the whole
presentation that blindsided us, but after all, things turned out well.
We said goodbye to our contacts and
friends in Ukraine two days ago (the 8th) and now we’re headed to
Bucharest for our debrief. Our
team and two others will stay there for our next month of ministry while the
rest head out to other cities and villages for theirs, with one team going to
Ukraine.
