The organization we are partnered with this month, Lasting Impressions, does a series of environmental and leadership camps. The profits from those camps go into running non-profit camps for locals. During our first week here we helped put on three non-profit camps aimed to educate and pour into the community.
The first camp, “Farming God’s Way” we had very little to do with as this is an existing program that received a lot of great feedback from the community and was requested to be done again. I had the opportunity to talk to some of the men and women taking this course and was blown away by their gratefulness and eagerness to learn the material being provided. The lands in the area we are in Kadoma, Zimbabwe are not “ideal farming lands” however, coupled with these principles taken from the Bible and put into practice many have begun to see results on their farms.
The second camp was a 2 day women’s program that my teammates Becca, McKenzie, and Kaiti helped organized and run. They used many teachings from Adventure in Missions Beauty for Ashes program that focuses on walking women out of shame, into freedom and forgiveness. There are so many women here who’ve suffered at the hand of forced prostitution, being infected with the HIV virus, or in abusive relationships. It was so moving hearing the stories and deep conversations the women shared with them during the 2 day period and how all of them either gave their lives to Christ for the first time or rededicated finding hope, redemption, and freedom over the course of the weekend.
The third camp was a “Children’s Fun Camp” that my teammates Meg, Alyssa, and myself helped organize and run. The idea was to provide a 2 day break before school started back up to just let loose and have a good time being a kid. We made the theme of the weekend prayer and made sure everything we did we pointed back to having a heart of gratitude.
It seems silly but the children here take so little effort to entertain or have joy. When our schedule would get messed up and an activity would run short or long we didn’t scramble to find something else the kids made us their jungle gyms and entertainment. We did the whole range of feild day activities with them; scavenger hunts; canoeing; archery and corn hole; swimming lessons; arts and crafts; you name it I’m sure it was on our itinerary. It never fails to amaze me the lessons we can learn of joy and love from children especially those who have so little.
