Teen Missions International Peanut Camp Cookie Command Team 2012 13-24 June
I had the pleasure of leading my 4th Peanut team this year at Teen Mission International (TMI). My team had 16 kids ages 7-9yrs old & 4 leaders including myself. My team was blessed to have the first Canadian to come to peanut camp. The kids sleep in two man tents & do primitive camping, no electricity, electronics, TV, video games, bucket baths & bucket flush for the bathroom. It is like going to Africa, Haiti & other countries where having a regular bed to sleep in is a luxury
I arrived at camp on 13 June & help set up the tents that our team would be sleeping in & get other things ready. The kids came on the 14th & 15th with camp starting the evening of the 15th. Our day went like this.
6:15am Rise & Shine for the campers. I always got up at 5:300 so I could be ready for the kids when they woke up.
7:00 - breakfast
8:00 - Devos - the picture explains it all
8:30 - Obstacle course: an 9 event course to team unity, here are some pictures
Cookie Command ready to run - we always started with prayer & countoff. Countoff is as follows, each kids is assigned a number when they come to camp. The leader will say a key word & the team will respond with a key answer & the leader will say countoff. The kids quickly countoff their number in numerical order as fast & quickly as they can. If a kid is missing that number is not said & the leader then knows if everyone is there or not.
1st obstacle load Elijah's chairot as quickly as you can & do countoff, then load off.
Loading up
Hopping off the bus & running to the next obstacle
2nd obstacle - New Testament Books, put the NT books in order from Matthew to Revelation
3rd obstacle - Ten Plagues of Egypt. Run through the tires touching all ten & call out the plagues of Egypt.
4th obstacle - Mt. Sinai. Climb over Mt. Sinai
5th obstacle - Eye of the Camel based on the verse Matthew 19:24
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God
6th obstacle - Hezekiah's tunnel, crawl or run through
7th obstacle & the favorite one, Slough of Despond (name taken from the book Pilgrims Progress)
8th obstacle - Jacob's Ladder
The last obstacle - the wall
The teams are done running the OC by 9:10& then it is time to snack & a life lesson with Scripture Sam & Object
At 9:30 - volunteers come to sit with the teams as they meet a Missionary from another country & here how God is using them in that country. I don't have any pictures for this because this is the only time leaders are not with their team but in a leader meeting.
The first three days of camp is known as "Boot Camp". These days are training time for the team to get ready for the projects. Project training is from 10:00- 10:50. Some of the teams are construction teams, so they learn how to mix concrete by hand or correct way to hammer a nail. Our team was an evangelical team, so our project time was spent learning songs & puppets to present the gospel.
10:55 - 11:50 is evangelical training. All the teams will present the gospel in music, puppets & using the wordless book. The kids practice how to stand & give an orderly presentation
Now I have to back up to the other three days of camp which are known as "Project Time". On these three days, project time runs from 10:00-12:30. Each team works on their assigned project & on one of these days will leave the camp to go to certain places & share the gospel. My team was Cookie Command. Our project was to bake cookies from scratch, package them & the pass them out when we present the gospel. The next set of pictures show our project days -
Day 1 - making the cookies; the kids made around 150 cookies. They did all the work with adults supervising & instructing.
Putting the cookies on the cookie trays
Day 2 - while the cookies baked - leaders did that for safety reasons; the kids took plastic bags, decorated them with stickers & put a Bible Verse pack in each one, then two cookies when they were done & cooled.
Cookies ready to be passed out tomorrow
Day 3 - the kids got clean up & dress up for their presentation. Then we left camp & we to a group/nursing home. The team presented the gospel with
Music
Puppets
Visiting with the residents
Sharing the meaning of the wordless book & giving one to each resident to have plus passed out cookies.
Our next stop was a local fire department. Again the kids presented the gospel in music & with the wordless books. We could not use the puppets in case the fire department was called out & we had to quickly leave
Okay back to the first three day of "Boot Camp"
11:55 - 12:25 all the teams come together to learn about music & puppets
12:30 was lunch. On one special day for each team, the team was taken on a tractor ride out to the Treehouse church for a picnic
1:30 - 2:00 was quiet time - time for the kids to read books about missionaries or letters they had received, read their Bible or write letters home
2:00 - 2:55 was fun time. Each day we had a different activity. Here are some of them
Making Kalamkari T-shirts - an way shirts are made in India. All the stamps used were made in India for TMI.
Bush Sunday School, the picture explains what this is
Making Wordless puppets
Noah's Ark - go & find all the animals & bring them onto the ark
Everybody is on the ark, send out the dove to find dry land (football painted as a dove)
The dove comes back with a olive branch
3:00 - 4:00 was pool time & bath time. Baths were done by buckets like missionaries in Africa & some people have to do in other countries.
5:00 was work on memorizing the daily verse
5:15 was supper time
6:45 was evening rally, worship time & guest speakers
Worship Time
Well, that concludes my 13 day mission trip. The kids were great & it was wonderful to see them work so hard for the Lord. I will be leading another team next year, can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for me on this trip.
