Volunteering and traveling in Argentina to proclaim God's great love, and hopefully not getting sick along the way.

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Who's got high class?

I have finally finished three straight weeks of English camp. If you don't remember what these are about, just look up last year about this time when we did camps with a circus theme. This year focuses on Thanksgiving, but we have a lot of other important Bible-based lessons in there as well.

I'm just going to go straight to the point on this one however, because there is much more from the past couple weeks that I would like to highlight. You have the basic context, so here we go:

Camp. Third week. The students arrive, and I already see a difference from all the rest. Not just cellphones, but Blackberries. Huge suitcases filled to the brim for the three days of camp (I just brought a backpack and small carrying bag). Here we go.

Camp firsts: students refusing, to your face, to speak in English. Students who do not give the typical Argentine greeting when they arrive, nor when they leave (in fact, windows closed on the bus!). Even Marisol got angry at them--this I have NEVER seen!

And when we talked about picking up after themselves, they looked at us with blank faces. But of course they have never even done chores! That's what the maids are for! Or should I talk about the boy who has an elevator in his house in order to reach the bottom floor, the garage, that holds multiple cars?

The thing is, we make a video with the students, based off of a music video you can find by looking up Matisyahu's song "One Day" in which there is a chain of random acts of kindness people do for each other. Acts of kindness like helping someone up if they fall, retrieving something someone accidentally left behind, etc. etc. Simple acts.

The first time during the brainstorming process that I had heard students bring up the idea of suicide, and how someone could talk someone off the ledge for example. It was the number one idea for both groups! And at least for my group, they had also thought of saving someone from committing suicide by leaving the gas on in the oven, or diving in front of a car to save another. As if these students are so sheltered in their gated communities that they can only think of extreme examples to help someone.

Don't get me started on how very few have actually helped people in need. I.E. from another social level.

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of taking risks, and so on the third morning I decided to share more about my life; really open up to them, even though they had yet to even show a desire to hear what I might have to say. So I led an exercise my parents had done with me when I was in high school, right before adopting Mark. We played a situational, how-would-you-feel-if-you-lost-everything-in-a-matter-of-moments, game. I warned them how it might be difficult to take it seriously, but to aim to do so as best as possible.

While many looked for loopholes, many started to get the point. They can't depend on money for the rest of their life. They do not have control over various things that could happen to either them or to their families. How will they respond?

I brought it home with personal examples from my brother, and from the boys that I had gotten to know last year. Eyes widened some more..

Perhaps in a matter of hours they were already speaking Spanish again, cursing on top of that, and cheating at every game whenever they could. Nonetheless, I have to hope that something stuck. Someday they'll remember a phrase or moment in there.

Besides, I'm just generalizing. And it's late, so perhaps my words are coming out a bit stronger than I mean them too. Then again, maybe not. It is difficult to get a camel through the eye of a needle after all.

Chau and with love, me.

1 comment:

  1. I understand, church camp sometimes had that difficulty. especially middle school. Flomo kids the things they struggled with the type of car they got or the clothing they felt entitled to. Compared to the Lewisville kids wanted just to fit into a group.

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