Stone Jumping: Day Five - 3rd (last) Day of Kids Camp

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”

Day 3 of camp and was woken up again by the singing of hymns. We started off with the parable of the Good Samaritan after the morning devotion led by Uncle Gilbert.

We donned on our costumes which looked like robes used in the olden days. I was called Joo who lived in Jooland who didn’t like the other guy called Sam because apparently their kind talked funny and acted funny. But one day as I was travelling on my ‘donkey’ I got robbed (even had blood on my face – facepaint I think), and the only one who saved me was, not the priest, not the Levite... but my archenemy, Sam. At the end of the play, I told the kids I was all right and better and healed thanks to Sam... with ‘blood’ still on my face. Oversight on my part. But the kids really enjoyed the play. The kept on prodding Sam to help Joo.. even though Joo smelt funny to Sam. As you can see the play is more of an adaptation.

The people from 'Jooland' and from Sam's country do not really get a long with each other

Joo travels on 'his' donkey but gets robbed by the black-jacket-duo

Darren's supposed to be a priest..but unfortunately he's scared of blood and doesn't help me

Darren is the Levite this time, but can't afford to get his white robes dirty. Only Sam (archenemy) offers to help poor Joo.

We then had a game of PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONKEY!

The horses were actually drawn by Aunt Lucy's son.

Craft time! The kids were really excited about making their own donkey from the cut-outs prepared during one of the youth fellowship sessions. You could see them vying for the attention of each teacher, springing up from their groups to show Zhi hong who was giving instructions, that they had done exactly what they told them to do. Within my group, I would hear endless queries, “kaya gini ibu?” (like this ma’am?), because the kids really want reassurance and approval of their work, at every step of the way.

Well after that was a bit of photo taking and then the preparation for the mini finale. We had to do:

A group cheer
Recite one memory verse and have one person explain it
Sing one song
Have 3 testimonies

The competition was intense. Kids don’t want to be outdone, and so the ‘who-can-sing/recite-the-loudest’ competition began. Try speaking in a construction site. That’s how the noise level was. Well at least the noise was ‘beautiful’ since it was filled with song and recitations.

A long awaited break was given as the kids went for lunch, after which each group gathered into their allocated spaces to rehearse their items. I gathered HIJAU (the green team) into the room and made them sit down on the floor to recite the memory verse first. Now there was one particular kid who was actually from the blue group who just would not leave my group, because his older sister was there. Well he was too young anyway so we kinda just let him tag along. But at this point in time, he was getting a bit difficult. After finally getting ALL the kids to sit down, there he was running around in circles around the kids who were seated. He was obviously a MAJOR DISTRACTION. This kid happens to be the very same one from my first day in kindergarten who I noticed had a colossal amount of energy. The famous..jufen. So there he was running around not paying attention to the calls of his sister trying to persuade him to sit. I had no translator, so in my broken Indonesian, I told him to sit down or else he would have to leave the room. I was not sure whether I could be comprehended coz he paused, looked at me feeling slightly embarrassed ... and then continued to run. Good think I didn’t pull my hair out, because he was actually just running around the kids to plop himself right next to his sister, where he stayed put.

The most interesting part during the rehearsals was the testimonies. 3 of the kids, Hendra, Darni and (the last one slips my mind) volunteered to give a testimony about why they came, what they learnt during camp and how they intended to apply what they learnt. Apparently they loved the games of passing down rubber bands with straws and learnt to throw away their trash. I realised that some of the kids thought this was a camp to learn English. I guess coz the previous camp probably incorporated some English learning sessions. Well you can tell that learning English is something popular in this part of Nias.

Esther's group did a really nice performance of "I have decided to follow Jesus"

Testimonies and giving out of goodie packs!

Our mini-finale started at four and some of the parents had come to see what their kids had learnt. The mini-finale went rather well, with the presentations and the message by my father afterwards. The kids got a bit restless because they were seated at the back and could not see what was happening. However it was a success and the children were very pleased with the goodie packs they received at the end of it all.

We didn’t have enough goodie packs, after all we only had 72 files, so we decided to give those aged 6 and below a different gift. And so jufen (5yrs old) who had somehow joined my group received the smaller gift even though he was reaching for the folder meant for the older kids. Someone spoke to him in Indonesian telling him that his gift was meant for his age, and he nodded his head in acceptance with those wide eyes and that cute face. He didn’t throw a tantrum or complain, and I found that really nice. In fact I didn’t hear a word of complaint about the classification of gifts. My heart just wanted to give them more.

And so we ended the day tired out, but satisfied and contented with how it had turned out. We had the song ‘dalam Yesus’ stuck in our heads for a very long time.

Debrief: