Saturday, May 17, 2008
Journal Entry for Nias Mission Trip : Day 3 - Children Camp Day1

3rd day slowly crept in as the beginning of day 1 of church camp commerced. It was also my 1st time meeting the kindergarten students. Auntie Lucy was teaching them alphabets, which was very engaging as they would sing the nursery rhythm out in front of us. After that, we did a little join the dots game of a zebra, whereby the kids coloured a multi-coloured zebra after they traced the zebra out. There was more work to be done for the children's camp. Uncle Famachoi requested the YAFers to come out with a large poster and to stick it up on the wall. There were other tasks to do such as cutting name tags and getting the projector ready. I had to dedicate the job to someone else as while the preparation of church camp is still going on, Uncle Famachoi was invited to a wedding ceremony, and the newly wed couple would want a few from the Singapore team to participate as well. I was one of the fortunate candidates to go.

A bible and a hymn book as a wedding gift, together with a little bit of cash here and there, we presented the bridesgroom. They were dressed in their ethnic costumes, with yellow, red and black exploding everywhere. The groom has a distinctive hard wooden necklace around his neck with a traditional knife; his wife has two large golden ear-rings around her ears. As hundred of relatives came for the event, singing and praises were all given to the guests as girls sing and dance and the men prance about with their warrior outfits. It was interesting to note that it is a Nias tradition for a person to represent a whole crowd as the voice of it. During speeches, he would yell "yaaallleeeaarrreeeeehhhhhhhhh" in acknowledgment of the speaker's words.

As the procession dragged on, we were becoming increasingly worried about the time, whether or not we could make it back to Yayasan by 3.30pm. By 3.00pm, we had no choice but to devise a sneak escape route. After exchanging a few words with his friend, Uncle Famachoi led Uncle Gilbert into his friend's house. Following that, Uncle William, Esther and I took our leave, pretending to take more shots of the wedding ceremony. We took a back exit of the house and soon enough we were on the main road. It was exciting to see us escape from the wedding procession. Our plan, however, did not work as the bridesgroom's wife had spotted us leaving. Perhaps it was my bright orange t-shirt which gave away our strategy.

Church camp shortly commerced after our return. There were already close to 50 children as more started to fill in the cramped house. Initially, we were all lost for what to do. Our plan did not go smoothly. What was to show a cartoon video ended up with doing the ice-breakers 1st. We were all unprepared, and were too worried over the missing dinner. As we tried to include more time-fillers into our programme, we ourselves got frustrated over one another. Thank God for the skit, which could have saved the day. The "deep and wide" song deserves credits as well, it being the most popular song throughout the camp. When the food finally arrived, we could only eat in silence, and plan for the debrief of the children. Church Camp Day 1 ended at roughly 8.30pm. Everyone was tired and somehow it felt like we had run a 20km race.

God was trying to show us that by our own understanding, mankind will tend to fail. It shows that no matter how much you have prepared, if your heart and your purpose is not centrered to God, it would all be futile. We can have all the preparations ready and laid out, but we failed to put our faith in God, and let Him work in the camp. We soon realised that while there was many activities going on, there was little of God's word, little of God's prayer. little of God's everything.

We were determined not to make the same mistake again.