Carnival- Camp

As many of you know, Carnival is a huge deal in Brazil and supposedly a thing that pops into your head when you think of Brazil. In Brazil when Carnival comes around most churches go on a retreat somewhere away from festivities. I have to admit I was a bit sadden to not get to go see Carnival but I trust every single person that told me it is incredibly crazy party and there are lots of things that I would not want to be a part of or see. Soooo we took our youth to a camp about 8 or 10 hours away. The reason I can't tell you exactly how long is because we never made the trip there or back in one solid chunk of time. You know what conclusion I came to? If at least one thing does not go wrong in anything we plan then we would have no idea what to do with ourselves. haha We had about 16 kids go and we took two cars and van which happen to be an old Volkswagen. Hilarious. Okay so if any of you have ever seen Little Miss Sunshine then you can somewhat imagine what we went through. That van broke down so much! So many good times. So the biggest time was the first break down. We were only about an hour and an half out when we smelled this intense burning smell. We ended up having to pull over and the guys pushed the van to this car dealership. There some guys looked at it and told us it was only a small repair, they would call a guy they knew and have us back on the road in an hour. Hahaha yea right! The guy comes from his house and looks at it and tell us he needs to pull us to his shop not to far away. We soon found out he meant to pull us with his little bitty car. He attaches us to his car by a rope and off we go. Somehow we made it to his shop, the rope only broke once but his shop was on a hill so he had to gun it up the slope in order to pull us up into his shop. There happen to be a car sitting by the drive and when he gunned it our van ran into the car and scrapped along it. Thankfully the car the van ran into was already totaled and the guy promised to touch up our van. He said he wouldn't be able to finish before 10 that night so Pe, a intern for the month, called his family who lived nearby and we stayed with them. Crazy, right?! We got to the camp a day late but all was well. The kids had a blast, not at first though. The camp was very conservative. The theme was something about Discipline, not exactly the thing teens what to talk about. Ali and Mark pointed out the importance of pouring into others not just being poured into so the youth took that and changed their attitude. It was a really proud moment of us, seeing the youth make the most the situation :) So many stories but way to long. Some of favorite memories from that camp would be hanging out with a bunch of 7 and 8 year old girls. I had decided to skip a lesson because I was reaching my breaking point with portuguese and these two little girls just come up to me and start talking to me. After realizing I didn't speak Portuguese, they each grabbed one of my hands and took off, from there is history. They were great and their grandmas were cooks so I got extra goodies and servings! We even played soap soccer on a blow up thing which I hope to get some pics of from Carol's camera and post on here. Fun sight, me with a bunch of little girls slipping, sliding, and busting it non stop. It was fun and meet lots of cool people. The director also asked me before I left if I would consider coming to work for his church and their youth after I finished in Itu. He was a great guy and I was honored he asked me to look into it. After a fun filled time at camp we headed back. Had one other big break down with the van. Luckily a guy at the gas station had a used part of the piece that we needed in the back of his car, thank you Lord, and after that we made it back safe and sound. It was such a neat trip though and had good quality bonding time. Yayyy for bonding!