Camp in Albania

It's the first week of camp here in Erseke, so I'm including some photos of our kids taking part in the fun. Godebo (pictured with his personal translator, Steven Stoscher) and Noel (participating in a sack race) are sleeping at the camp all week. Thankfully, they are in the same room, along with Steven and Jamie Stoscher and two other boys who speak fluent English. Even so, a lot of the time, they must sit back and listen to Albanian being spoken, so it's not an easy undertaking. I'm proud of them for being so brave to give this experience a try.

Jeff, Bereket, Isabel and I walked over to camp at lunch time today to see if we could lend a hand. Unfortunately for us, the camp is pretty well staffed, so there wasn't much for us to do. Isabel helped a bit with crafts (photo below), Bereket enjoyed the climbing wall and some other activities, and I dried some dishes for about an hour, but the rest of the time we just did a lot of watching and chatting with people, or playing volleyball and basketball with the campers and counselors. It's very weird not to have a lick of responsibility here. Quite frankly, we're deadly bored a lot of the time. But that's just how it goes when you show up someplace without an established role. It gives us flexibility to come and go as we please, but it means we're twiddling our thumbs a lot of the time. Jeff tells me this is part of "detox" from our busyness at home -- in other words, it feels very uncomfortable, even painful, but it's really a good thing for us. I can buy that, I guess, but the truth is that I feel more lonely and homesick when I'm not busy, so it makes this long vacation much harder in some ways.

Oh -- for those from Sacramento, I included a photo of Natalie, who is being such a trooper at camp, but is also feeling somewhat lonely and bored at times. She's a bit amazed by the lack of organization here; the schedule is loosely organized, but there's a lot of running around or waiting around -- not at all like Westminster Woods. Here she's pictured with two of her co-counselors, Mary from Kosovo, a delightful and joyful 16-year-old who came to faith in the midst of great personal tragedy during the war there; and Anna, a serious but pleasant German college student who was in Albania for the Torchbearers Bible School and decided to stay for the summer.