Wake-A-Thon

The wake-a-thon turned out to be a lot of fun, and an excellent bonding experience! There were many laughs, giggles and yawns, which made it even more interesting...We had times of worship and devotionals, free time, some beach and water games, clean-up/service time, a movie... We played volleyball: staff vs. youth. It was a blast, and got to be fun and competitive. Then we upgraded, and played water volleyball with water balloons. Some of them had a hard time getting the water balloon to even leave the towel, where as some could launch it really high, no problem. Gary and I had a hilarious problem, that got the kids going even more. We were partners, and our towel that we were using was very old... We would try to launch it as high as we possibly could, and then rrriiiiiiiipppppppp! The part of the towel where Gary was holding, ripped right off of the towel. Then shortly after my side did the same thing. It was fun though, and we then had sweat rags to finish off our game! :) We later went down to the beach, had games, then hotdogs, marshmallows and a bonfire. My first one since I've been here- I was excited! We had the guitar and worshipped around the bonfire and watched the sunset. Beautiful! We also had a scavenger hunt planned at Kmart. We had the kids split up into teams and go around the store finding prices, etc. of certain objects. After that we had a Talatamona hike planned. We went on this hike at 4:00 in the morning- it was dark, and a few staff planned some scary things to scare the youth a bit. We had glow sticks that looked like eyes hiding in the jungle, and a white sheet attached to a string, so when you pulled it, they would catch a glimpse of something white in the distance moving... We hiked down to another beach where we had another devotional, and watched the sunrise. We went for breakfast, and some of them were so tired- Josh, one of the guys fell asleep spread out on one of the eating booths. From there on we slowly watched some of them give into their lack of sleep, and calling pew benches. :) One thing that I found the hardest was when we went to the Days Inn swimming pool at 2 in the afternoon. The sun was hot- not much shade, it was draining my energy... To end the wake-a-thon we had Kangaroo court. That is where the staff come together at the end, and discuss if there was any youth we had problems with, etc. There ended up only being a few, and then they would have to stand before a "jury"- made up of a few other youth, and they had to do something. One of the things was this guys had to put eggs in his sandals, and then step on them breaking the egg all over his feet and sandals. They were all good participants, and it was a nice closing to our 36 hour wake-a-thon! We had a turnout of 23 youth, and about 5-6 leaders. Thank you to everyone that supported us in this event. It was really appreciated! I have really been blessed throughout these times to hang out and get to know the youth better, and just be blessed by the people and my involvement here!
*Love Kalena*