General Update

Day Camp. It's become pretty normal. Every day from 8am to about 3:30 or 4pm the family and I are working at day camp. Each week a different suburban youth group comes to help out. Some are more helpful than others. This weeks crew is great.

I've been working in two different gardens, and am altogether too lenient with the kids. When they come with me, they sometimes get to go to the store, they get to hang out outside and play with the water hose... and pull a weed, plant a seed, harvest a pea. Today I picked a nice big zucchini and a bunch of little orange tomatoes. I also took some green tomatoes that I'm going to try to fry tonight or tomorrow. Fried green tomatoes! We also ate fresh jalapenos right off the plant today... HOT!!!

The team has been developing well as a family. There's been some friction, some occasional conflict, but it's been a good growing process for all of us. Satan has been attacking in real ways. We had one emotional breakdown, one team member who had to leave for a week to be with her mom who has cancer. But God is good.

I've also had some really great and encouraging conversations with our leader Matt regarding leadership and my previously mentioned desire to speak some of the hard truths that I'm learning to the white middle class church.

The guys that I'll be living with this fall are coming up this weekend (for 28 hours) to try to find a place for us to stay.

One of the things that's been really hard for me to handle with day camp kids has been the general violence of the culture. Kids learn that the way to stand up for themselves and their family is to fight back. If you're talking about my aunti, I hit you. That's the way it works. But the first rule of day camp is no fighting. The gospel is always counter-cultural. And "turn the other cheek" is just one way that it's counter-cultural here.