Lithuania - Day 1 - Perspective

Isn't it amazing how quickly our perspective can change? If you had told me yesterday afternoon on our way here that we would have 41 campers for our first day of camp, I would have been very excited.  At that point, I had no point of reference for my expectations and we had even talked about the possibility that we could have 5 kids or 200.  If you had told me when I went to bed last night that we would have 41 kids in camp today, I think I would have been very disappointed, because we had heard of all the hard work that the church here had done in preparation and we were daring to expect 80 to 200 kids and talking about how to deal with that many kids effectively.

As I write to you this afternoon, we have finished our first day of camp with 41 campers and I am just marveling at the sovereign nature of the God that we serve.  We had exactly what we could handle today.  The gym here is 1/3 the size of the gym we used in Latvia.  It has outdoor courts that we planned to use as well, but it rained much of the morning so they were not always available to us.  And the language barrier seems to be a little harder to overcome here than it was in Latvia, but once again, God knows all that and He knows how to make it all worthwhile. 
Among the 41 campers were a group of about 7 kids from an orphanage here in Kaunas.  They made it clear as soon as they came through the door that they didn't want to be split up.  They wanted to stay together.  They were a challenge to work with.  They were difficult and disruptive, but it soon became clear to us that what they needed more than anything else was a little bit of genuine love.  One boy, Gadas, was expecially expressive during our presentation of the Gospel today.  Today's portion introduced God.  When we asked "Who is God?"  Gadas answered, "Me!" 

Please pray for this young man.  While he is going to be a difficult case, if he receives Christ, he has the potential to have a great impact for Him among the orphans.
We also had four young men from the Juvenile Prison that were allowed to come to our camp today.  They were all about 17 years old.  Coach Joshua Laney noticed how buff one young man was and told him, "You'd better quit lifting those weights, you are going to hurt yourself."  The boy said, "It's just survival."  He later told Coach Laney that he had been in the prison for four years and had four more years to serve.  This was the first time he had been able to go outside of the prison for an event.
Since today was the only day that these four boys would be at the camp, we took them back to the classroom when camp was over and shared the rest of the Gospel presentation with them.  With most of these kids, we will take it very slow and present the Gospel over the entire four day camp, but since we don't have that luxury with these boys, we took extra time today. When we had finished, each of them bowed their heads and prayed with us.  We don't know how many of them asked Christ to save them, but we do know that they received a detailed, step by step explanation of the Gospel and were asked to make a decision.  In my heart, I believe that God did a work in their lives today.



Our team with the four boys from the Youth Prison

 After the camp was over, the chaplains of the prison invited us to come tomorrow evening and do a two hour camp with 120 of the inmates inside the prison.  We will have the opportunity to clearly present the Gospel to all of them, so I believe that God answered our prayers today.  He gave us all of the kids we could handle and he opened a door to three times as many more for tomorrow afternoon.  We serve an amazing God!