Самара - Samara Camp

:: Samara Sunset Skyline ::

Here are some photos (and here is a slideshow of them) from the camp that we did with a church in Samara. The church is one of the largest Baptist churches in the city of Samara. We had a feedback meeting tonight on how the camp went from our perspective, and what God has been showing us so far.

... On the way to Samara our flight was delayed for 10 hours. It was pouring rain by the time we made it to the airport, but we didn't know we were delayed until after we passed security, and they didn't give us an expected departure, they just kept anoucing that more information was be available in 30 minutes. So, every 30 minutes, they announced that they would anounce again in 30 minutes. For... 10 hours. So, that explains the sunrise photo at the airport, when our flight was due to leave at 11pm. :) "...S7 Airlines apologize... *dong*"

:: Camp - Survivor Style ::

The leadership team for the camp was really incredible. We arrived on the desert island 2 nights before the kids came, so we could prepare everything. The leadership team was about 25 people (including the six of us from Moscow), but the 20 or so from the church in Samara work really well as a team. They really love each other. There were no official interpreters at the camp for the Americans to really interact with the Russians, but the couple leaders who spoke nearly fluent English really helped us out a lot. The kids were anxious to try out their English too, and so, we seemed to connect well. We focused our efforts on praying for and encouraging the Russian leadership, and it was evident that it was working well.

I seem to be in a whirlwind of activity... I think it will die down for the week by Wednesday, but by Saturday I will be getting ready to head to another tent camp. I will try and get some quality posts in by then. We are compiling our pictures from this trip and from Moscow in general and I will be getting a bunch of them on the net someplace soon. I am trying out Google's Picasa Web Albums for the current batch of pictures, but they have a storage limit (it increases considerably for $25.00/yr), and I am all about free stuff. So if anyone has a great place that they store their online photos, let me know. I need something that does batch uploading, editing, and some organization tools. I have pictures on Flickr, Photobucket, and now Picasa Web Albums.