"And the beat goes on...

...and the beat goes on.  La di da da di, la di da di da..."

In 10 days, Serafima, Oleg, and Lena will be moving from the Caucasus further south to Novorossyisk to work at the camp. Oleg and his wife Lena will be sports instructors, and Serafima will be the emcee for camp meetings.  That is when the real fun begins; we'll be meeting every week to plan camp activities, and I couldn't be more excited!

Until then, my tasks have been somewhat open-ended.  I've been compiling data on C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", the theme of our camp in January.  This means reading the book, watching the movie, and surfing the internet for ideas.  Do I have a great job or what?  The more research I do, the more excited I'm becoming.

The main body of my work consists of compiling the workbooks for the kids.  We'll have four days of lessons, and I've decided to split up those four days by focusing on characters from the book, and on their character traits.  I like Narnia, because for  task like this, not only is it very interesting to talk about the characters from the story, but it's a good opportunity to talk about deeper things like personal character.  What are good and admirable character traits?  What are poor character traits?  I'm especially excited for the final lesson, which will focus on the lion Aslan.  Those of you familiar with the deeper meaning of the story will understand my excitement.

On a related note, youth group is going quite well.  I helped last week and in a few minutes, I'll be off again.  My friend Andree (a different Andree, Russians only have like 15 names that everyone has to share) is leading it, and it's wonderful to see how many kids from English Camp come who otherwise wouldn't have had any connection to a youth group.  That's why I love English Camp!

At the base with some friends from Krasnodar getting ready for baseball

Some of our girls from camp who happened to be on the base while we were; we roped them into baseball!

Look at this guy!

In other news, I've been reassured by the director of Mountain Springs herself, Alysea, that my document process is "under control".  Hallelujah, because I was really worried for a while!  But God is good, he's taking care of the process!

That's all everybody, I'll be sure to keep you updated!

Пока ребята, Russian Jane