We (4 Jones', Jakob the translator, 4 State Collegians, and 6 "Crownies"- a groups from crown college) left Berlin on Saturday the 23rd and drove about 90 minutes to the tiny village of Karchow (which is in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, if you're curious). When I say tiny, I mean it consisted of one street that had the parsonage, old school house, little village church, a cemetery, thatched roof barn, and a few houses on one street. The parsonage was massive compared to all the parsonages I've seen in America, so that's primarily where camp took place. It was 3 floors and housed all 24 of the campers, the entire staff (minus the Jones' and I), 2 English classes, all meals, and a makeshift "office". The other English class, Etwas Mehr (literally "Something More", as in Chapel), and Don, Sarah, Dane, Jenna, and I stayed in the old school house.
As for a schedule, the campers arrived on Sunday and stayed until Saturday the 30th. There were 8 guys and 16 girls that were divided into 6 small groups for the spiritual side of camp and 4 teams for the competitive side of camp. Every morning, the camp would wake up for "Kickin' It Into Gear with Kari", which, loosely translated, means "get your team in order for stretched and a quick workout". Kari Lucas is one of the people from State College who just happens to be a personal trainer. Then it was breakfast, cleaning chores, small groups, English class #1, and lunch. I forget exactly what happened after lunch, but I know there were team competition #1, English class #2, team competition #2, free time, dinner, and free time. After that was Etwas Mehr, which was worship and a message, small groups, and then bed. I was a small group leader, co-leader of the green (affectionately known as the Green Smelly Nachos)/aqua team, and I got to hang out Dane and Jenna during the long English class.
Now this is where it gets tough: trying to describe German teenagers in general and then spiritually. First off, Europe is known to be much more fashionable than America. But in Germany, I use the term "fashionable" lightly. Let's just say that wearing socks with sandals is a common occurrence. There was some mocking of the American style, but quite honestly, take one look in the mirror and then make fun of what I'm wearing. In short, some of the teens at camp looked like they had just come off of the set of "Twilight". Also, there is very little respect of authority, to the point where it felt like pulling teeth when we asked/told them to do something. And spiritually, suffice it to say that there is a huge difference between the former East Germany and the former West Germany. At an American Christian camp, you would expect about 90% of the people to be Christians. Here, it was more like 33%, and those kids tended to be from the former West. This camp has a huge ministry in former East Germany, which brings a lot of opportunity and a lot of spiritual hardness with it.
The lack of respect and the spiritual hardness caused us, as a staff, to shuffle things around the entire week. I started out with 5 girls in my small group, and by Tuesday had 3. We started out with 4 teams, switched them on Tuesday, and then combined them on Thursday. There were 2 guys small groups, but by Tuesday they were one large group. It was definitely a tough, character-building week, but when it was time to compete (and everyone understood what was happening), it was fun. Germans have zero inhibitions about competition- there is always one winner and one loser, not like in America where "everyone is a winner!". We also got to go to the lake for an afternoon and relax (in between running away from the swarms of bees), have a movie night (which EVERYONE loved!), and the staff got to serve the campers dinner on the last night, which is always an awesome experience.
So awesome, in fact, that I leave you with this: Don Jones leading by example and washing the dishes after dinner.
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