What a Weekend

This past weekend, as I had mentioned before, was Carnaval. Now if you aren't familiar, Carnaval occurs in the days right before Lent. It's usually a big party time, and each country has it's own slant. For our area of Bolivia, it's lots of pranks, and hurling paint and water balloons at each other for 4 days. Kind of crazy! Most churches in Santa Cruz have a weekend retreat, a time to get out of the crazy city, and take advantage of the 4 day weekend.

So our church, together with three others, was having a campamento, a camp retreat. And Carl was asked to be one of the speakers. How exciting!! Carl was scheduled to speak at four sessions, all in Spanish. I was really looking forward to it.

The weeks leading up to the weekend we received interesting tidbits of information from various people.

Someone said that we should bring toilet paper....

Another family said they weren't going, and then another one wasn't going and another one.....

Somebody else wondered if we would stay for the ENTIRE 4 days.....

A guy asked if only Carl was going.....

Another suggestion was to do camping, and not stay in the dormitory style rooms.....

So I started to wonder, what kind of church retreat is this? I mean, I understand about the toilet paper, that's kind of a staple in my purse by now, but what were the other things that people were talking about?

I would soon find out.

Once we got there, we found out pretty quickly that this is more of a youth retreat than a church a.k.a lots of variety in age retreat. There were over 50 youth there, and I only saw about 5-10 people that were older than I. I quickly did the math....that's a 10-1 ratio. This should be interesting.

The music was great! But very loud.

The food was great! But I shouldn't have drunk the water and supper was a bit late for the kids.

The speaker was wonderful, and I could even understand him! Considering the fact that he quickly changed his messages to suit the younger crowd, I would go as far as to call him brilliant! moving! lifechanging!

The sleeping arrangements and other accomodations were, well, uh....character building as my parents would say it.

Character building: karaktr bildng - something in life that is difficult, takes you out of your comfort zone, may cause some temporary strife, but results in long term appreciation and perspective.

Without taking you through step by step of my character building moments, I'll just say this. At 1 am we moved from our tent, right in the middle of all the teen chaos, to a room in the church across the field. I would not be inclined to move sleeping children unless there is due reason. And there was due reason!!

We didn't sleep too well that night because of the mattresses and the lingering tension, but at least it was quiet, except for the birds in the ceiling and the cockroaches on the floor. Carl said it would top his all time worst sleeps, beating the night that Joel, at 2, threw away his soother and screamed most of the night for it.

The next day, though tired, I played some volleyball and Carl played some soccer. Joel and Kezia and Asha enjoyed being doted on by all the teens and there were a few little kids for them to play with. I was amazed that in an all Spanish environment how quickly their language skills improved. We were well taken care of by Juana, whom we work with, who was also along on the retreat. She was very concerned that we had enough to eat and that the kids were happy and warm and that we weren't feeling to overwhelmed with all the chaos. She also introduced me to new ladies, and that was nice to get to know some people.

We didn't leave any earlier than we had planned, but we decided beforehand that we wouldn't stay for the entire 4 days. It was Joel's birthday, and with us having to make arrangements for someone to be on the yard for another 2 days, it was easier to go home. I think by Monday morning, Asha and I were both raring to go. She, because she was constantly being picked up (and she hadn't jogged in days!) and I, well, I had enough character building for one weekend.

On the way home, Asha fell asleep immediately. As we came into the city, we noticed all the buses and taxis with mud caked on them; that way when the paint balloons hit, they don't wreck the paint job. We even saw one taxi that had plastic bags taped all over it. Crazy eh?

I was so thankful for my shower. For tile floors to walk barefoot on, for my bed and a fan and screens to keep out most of the mosquitoes. I was thankful for the quiet yard and fruit and vegetables at meal times.

But I was also thankful for this character building experience. Carl had a great opportunity to speak, and he introduced some deep aspects of faith to those young people and to their pastors. Many people said that he had given them lots to think about.

So if it was only for that, for Carl's opportunity to speak to those folks, it would have been worth it. But then I'm forgetting that the music was great, the food was filling, the kids had fun, Juana was so caring, and looking back, yes, it will result in long term appreciation and perspective.