Learning how to be a floater - Up to date - The end of week 2 of camp

The end of the second week of camp is over and was very exciting. The kids that came were from the surrounding village of Khongor. The first day 21 came, then next 27 came, and the last day there were 26 so bear with us on the statistics, but by the end of the week, out of the 26 kids there Wednesday and knowing only one girl came already as a believer, the other 25 had accepted Christ that week. I have never experienced a 100% salvation rate at camp before. It was less likely that I would ever have a single kid in my cabin become a Christian in 6 24-hour days much less 3 9-hour days. God is seriously moving in this community. Keep praying that this tool could be used to reach the entire country. Each of the kids that left made the 5-beaded salvation bracelets. They were each trained and practiced with each other explaining the meaning of each bead's color to signify the Good News of God's love for the world and the hope He gives. It's so cool to look around the village and see the bracelets on so many of the children. 6 came to church today, which I thought was pretty cool considering usually only Jerry's kids attend the church there. Baagi has already spoken of the importance of keeping up with these new believers and training them to be disciples for Christ in Mongolia.




With all that God did this week, it really makes me think of what I really wanted before Mongolia came into the picture. I had wanted to work at T Bar M since I was a camper myself. I got to work as a coach the past 2 summers in the first half sessions, and as I said before I think only 2 or 3 girls in my total number of campers under my cabin accepted Christ that week of camp. I know its only God who softens hearts, but I wanted to be used by Him completely to my greatest ability. Along with that, I had always wanted to be on the leadership team. It is not a team I can just sign up for, the staff has to invite you on. I sort of held on to the hope that I might get asked on this summer, but as plans for Mongolia grew to overcome my whole summer, I had to let go of that desire or even to be a coach at all. As I also mentioned in previous blogs, as the summer grew closer I had some regretful thoughts about not going to camp this year. At camp my job is clear, set before me, and I work hard to get it done properly. Here in Mongolia however, I have no specific job. The T Bar M crew set to train the coaches and I helped here and there, not really being officially apart of their team, but still included. Then as the second week began, I was even more of a floater than before. I didn't like it to be frank. I wanted a job. I wanted to know exactly what I was to do and what was wanted of my part. Still, I was a floater, with no particular goal than to help. Sometimes its hard to ask if coaches need help when they don't speak as good English as others, and my Mongolian being so limited.



I stayed available to Baagi and the coaches still since I didn't want to be a lazy lump on a log. He asked me to do some of the same little set ups as the T Bar M crew did for them the first week, like setting up theme decorations in the dining area, keeping an inventory and account of the various sports equipment, and helping provide supplies for WOG and MAC. I realized about the second day of the second week that my bashin (cabin) looks like...the ship shack. For those not familiar with T Bar M, this is the name for the area in which leadership team members come to meet, plan, organize, and also store the mass amounts of things they need to make camp run. Its so funny to me. For all the inner turmoil I held for having to be a floater, I'm starting to realize, God seems to have put me in a sort of leadership team role. Boogi and Mark are the two Mustangs who are actually the leadership team here, but its so interesting to me. What I called floating, God mirrors to me as leading the way I would have loved to have done back at sports camp. I don't need the title. I just needed to stay available. God is so mysterious and good. He had called me to this great country to do something I love to do back in Texas. It's just too cool.



This next week will be probably the last real week of doing camp for us. By Wednesday, the medical team from Plymouth Park Baptist Church will be here and ready to take a full week of traveling to different villages and setting up a daily health clinic. This will take up a lot of the labor force that Jerry provides, including the Mustangs and us. The week after that is the Mongolian holiday known as Nadaam. It's a week long celebration filled with games and cultural history. Jerry is giving most his staff the whole week off so he needs the Americans to help with his kids. then after that week, we'll only be here until July 21. The Mongolian team will carry out a few more camps again in August, but we will have flown back to the States by then obviously. I brought that to Baagi's attention today and he was a bit surprised. He told us that we needed to make clones of ourselves so that we could stay in Mongolia. I encouraged him and the team to just understand that this camp is theirs, for Mongolians, not Americans. I knew that they could do it. Pray for them as they organize more and more on their own, and to trust in the Lord to provide what they need that their efforts may bring a much bigger impact on reaching the children in their country for Christ.

~Caitlin