As the trip slowly comes to a close, we wanted to take a minute to tell you a few things about the trip from our perspective.
First, God certainly blessed us with an AMAZING team. Your students and adults are wonderful!! Everyone put forth their best foot this week, working together and doing what they needed to do to be the hands and feet of God. They were challenged in the morning and evening to grow in their personal faith, and worked diligently to show love at their sites, even when it was challenging.
The student leadership team worked hard to lead their team and communicate with their adults. I am very proud of both the students and adults for working together to find the right balance of adult mentorship and student leadership.
VBS – written by our teams – was great as well. The imagination and creativity was impressive, as was the amount of work they out into making it work at their sites. They even gave up quite a bit of California time to prepare and organize their teams.
Each team had some serious challenges this week. I am not sure how much of the challenging stuff made it into the blog – but man, with a lot of prayer, each team really stepped up to the plate! The build team, rather than starting from the beginning, had to piece things together and make them work, which was super challenging. The Park Team had a few boys at their site that were very hard to love – throwing rocks and cursing at our team. The team took time to remember that these boys come from homes where there is not a lot of attention or love and made a true effort to shower even more love on them. The team in Soli started not 1, but 2 new sites for Octane. This is hard work and makes for a couple long days figuring out the details. Regardless of the challenges, each day when I asked how the day went, all of our students were super excited and happy, ready to go again the next day to share God’s love with more kids.
On a personal level, I am so very thankful for all of Octane’s hearts and love for my family. They made it possible – almost easy at times – to have my kids at camp. This is no small feat…a 5 month old, 3 year old, and 4 year old at camp in the heat with the mosquitoes and very little sleep. All of our team was so great and helpful – I am so absolutely thankful for each of them!!!!
Last but not least – we are FULLY FUNDED!!!!! Thank you to Trinity and their Wild Game Dinner, St. Augustine and their pancake dinner, a last minute anonymous donation, the Mexican Dinner, and all of our Aunt Polly letters, God has blessed us with FULL FUNDING for our trip.
What an amazing God we have. So many details came together just perfectly, with the right people in the right places at the right time. God is so very good.
Our trip is not over yet, though. While my family came home one day before the rest of the team, everyone else is still on their way home. Today and tomorrow are VERY long days for our team. They are exhausted and will get into San Diego any minute. Once there, they need to clean out all of the vans, shower, and make sure they know what luggage goes where. Our first flight leaves at 6:15 am, and our last one lands here in Detroit at midnight. I will meet our flights at the hotel tomorrow, get them settled in and then we will be debriefing and praying for each of our team members on Saturday morning. Please pray for a strong finish to the trip, that everyone gets along and is patient even though they are soooo very tired, that God blesses them with great travels, a heart that is ready to debrief on Saturday and an excitement to see their friends and family.
See you all soon!
In His Grip,
Amy and the leadership team