When I Say Keep It, You Say Real

 A week ago, I was sitting on the beach in 30 degree weather, soaking up the last bit of sun with a bunch of youth before we left Florida for another year. We had a fantastic week. SouthBound is a highlight of the year for many of our youth and staff, and this year did not let us down.


This year our youth were challenged to "Keep It Real" by our speaker, Laura Bronson, of Keep It Real Ministries. This was not just the theme for the week, but quickly became the overall attitude and lifestyle around the camp. Youth connected in a way that we hadn't seen in a while. If a youth was hanging around the fringes, there were always one or two peers who brought them into the group, breaking down many of the cliques and boundaries that often exist in the teen world. There were so many deep discussions this year, and the focus around keeping it real and sharing our stories certainly helped youth think about important things in their lives. We talked to youth who wanted to know if they had a story to tell, youth whose stories involved trauma and tragedy, and youth who had deep questions about life, God, and how the two mix. Youth prayed for each other, a treasure we hold on to when we work with teens who are all over the place in their journey with Christ. Youth read Scripture to their peers, and shared about their faith journey in small groups. It was an amazing year. 


Of course, as with any Youth for Christ event, we were up to our usual camp shenanigans. More than one dinner was interrupted by hilarious melodramas featuring superheroes with wacky hair or Harry Potter superfans. A mysterious green rubber snake made its way into a few bunkbeds (mine included). And, we spent crazy amounts of time on the beach, wakeboarding and tubing, doing our best Baywatch impressions, and getting thrown in the water.

This trip is amazing, and it seems to get better every year. As a staff, it leaves me fired up as we return to our usual programs this week, and I'm excited for what the weekend will bring. Many youth were profoundly inspired by our week in Florida, and we look forward to growing in our relationships with them. Here's some pictures:

Tubing with our cow friends.

The wacky hair superheroes.

Minute To Win It YFC style

A dramatic presentation of the Prodigal Son.

YMCA forever!

Typgoon Lagoon

St. Patrick's day with some of the female leaders

St. Pete's Beach

Our speaker, Laura, tagged shirts for all of us.

Evening session

Friday's relay led to some swamped kayaks

The whole group

Stories From The Road - Project Serve Mississippi Part II

As promised, here is the second installment of Aaron's blogs from our week in Mississippi.

Tuesday August 24 - Day 4

Jeremy, one of our more outgoing leaders who os sitting beside me is really bugging me for some kind of shoutout. So here you go jer- You are amazing!

This update will be quite short as today was a Work day similar to yesterday.
Today we painted and painted and painted with our group. Other groups were Building decks, gardening, and tiling.

Today it was hot! So hot that Alex and I (Aaron) got heat stroke...In an air conditioned home. We ended working together in the house and just after lunch we both realized that we had no energy, we both had headaches, which I still have tonight. So we sat and under a fan for a about 20mins then came to realize that we needed to cool down. So we filled our water bottles with ice cold water and poured it over oursleves. We soon felt 100% better being drenched in water. We got ourselves some gatoraide and rehydrated. Our group got to head back to the compound at 3 to shower up. Tonight we have mostly recovered. Everyone is feeling the heat tonight as there is only a handful of is awake at 9:30pm. Everyone has gone to bed...except I just looked over to see an eruption of laughter - Alex and Megan are playing a game.

On a side note. I mentoned yesterday that we took a tour of the town to look at the left over destruction. The foundations that were left behind had numbers on the proporty, on trees, and what not. We thought that they were house numbers but couldn't figure out how random they were. We were told today that those numbers were how many people were in that house when it was destroyed. The numbers are how many people had died. Weird how those numbers remain five years later.
Tomorrow we'll head back to jim's house for another day of painting.
LESM, the organization we are with will be closing ts doors for good this week. We are the last team to ever serve with them. We are trying our best to help finish all projects in three days. Let's hope we can!!!!

More tomorrow. Off to bed.


Wednesday August 25 - Day 5

Okay so my updates I think for the next two days will be reperative. Our days seem to be getting shorter and shorter with little time for any real exciting updates.
Our work site is coming along Nicely. We have graduated from painting to scraping floors to get ready for the tiles. Last night we attempted to go to the beach to swim but as we got there the water was infected with jellyfish, which most people did not feel comfortable swimming in. So we sat at the beach and just relaxed.
We seem to be going to bed earlier each night, I guess we are putting in a good hard days work. We head to New Orleans on Friday, I think everyone is looking forward to sleeping in a good comfy bed and swimming.
I'll try and make my last work update exciting- but no promises....

More tomorrow!


Thursday August 26 - Day 6

So today was great! Our work team graduated from painting to laying cement board in the kitchen of jim's house. After we leave some of the the staff will be sticking around to lay tile. Tomorrow is our las day so we are hoping to have all the cement board done. After work today we headed over the University is southen Mississippi to see a 500 year old oak tree called 'the friendship tree', it survived the hurricane. After that we came bak for dinner. Between being back and dinner one of our team members lost a toe nail in a basketball game. We are trying to avoid the US medical system to we have taped it down hoping we can make it back to Canada to get looked at.
After dinner we headed to walmart. Possibly a mistake... I am currently looking at hoards of pop and candy. Yikes!
Alex and I did buy some boiled peanuts and shared a southern treat. Not sure how we feel about them yet. They taste like a mixture of chick peas and kidney beans.
Well, bed time hopfully the sugar high won't keep people up for long.
Heading to new Orleans tomorrow to fly out on saturday.

More tomorrow!

The Friendship Oak

A campus building, abandoned after the storm

Left virtually untouched after Katrina

Saturday August 28 - Day 8

So our last was pretty good! We finished up our worksite and got some pictures of our team with Jim and his family. We we're the first team to finish early because we ran out of mortor, so after lunch we did a massive clean up of the house and said goodbye. The after was very relaxing at the compound.
Right before dinner he headed to Pass Christian (small coastal town) to find Mississippi's oldest tree. We found the 1000 year old oak tree that rivaled the friendship tree we saw the day before.
We left Bay St Louis in another storm. Although when we left it was just raining.
We're back in New Orleans now and will spend the morning by the pool. Perhaps some will head to the mall.
It's been a good although lots of people are tired and cranky, maybe a good night's sleep will help.

Our team at the 1,000 year old oak - enormous tree!

Danielle's work team with finished product at the house in Pass Christian

So there you have our updates throughout the week! Wrapping up the trip and coming home was an interesting experience - as we left, the Gulf was preparing to recognize the fifth anniversary of the storm. Seeing images on TV of incredible devastation in many of the areas that we worked in was a tough thing. We also closed out the ministry and incredible work of Mission on the Bay, who have been working on rebuilding homes and restoring hope since Katrina first devastated the coast. Our crew was featured on a couple of local news casts that you can see here and here. It was a bittersweet farewell; we were excited to return to our homes and towns, but left with a sense of helplessness, knowing that we had done all that we could, but that there was still an immense amount of work that needed to be done. We will be meeting with the Collingwood team later this week to debrief our experience, and preparing to share stories amongst our team and to their families, an exciting chance to see the impact that this trip has had on their lives. If we are able, I will hopefully post some stories and reaction from our youth team. An incredible experience, and one that blew me away in ways I wasn't expecting.

Stories From the Road - Project Serve, Mississippi

This summer has been extremely busy for us, and we definitely haven't kept up with our blog. Much of this summer was focused on our Project Serve trip. We returned Sunday morning at 4:30am from our trip to Bay St. Louis Mississippi. While we were there, Aaron kept a blog on Facebook for the youth and parent's to track our week. Here is our journal from the road, and some pictures.

The areas that we worked in were West of Gulfport, most of them too small to get on the map.

August 21 - Day 1 - Getting There
(sorry for any grammer or spelling errors - an iPod can only do so much)

Saturday august 21
Project serve Mississippi

As I write this we are airborne! Headed to new wark, new jersey. Last night we arrived in St. Catherines around 12:30am. We we're asleep, if you can actually call it sleep, before 1am. The team from orangeville ran into some delays through the night, which set us back almost an hour. We woke up at 4:30am, packed and headed to tim hortons to meet up with the team. We got ourselves situated around 6am and headed for the border crossing. We we're all a little nervous because the last Mississippi trip was delayed 7 hrs - needless to say a delay like that would certainly set us back. We arrived at the boarder in a good ol' fashioned convoy. Car one went ahead. It wasn't 30 seconds before they we're released. Thankfully we all made it through in under 5 minutes. As we headed to buffalo one of our leaders had to pull over. Cell phone missing. Thought to have dropped it in the tims in Ontario we knew we did not have the time to retrieve it as our flight was literally taking off in an hour.
We made it to the airport at 7:50am. By airline standerds we we're beyond late. We caused a frienzy at the gate and even annoyed the nice ladies who had to check us in. We should already be boarding. The lady got on the phone to the plane, all we could hear was, "we're not holding the flight". Well it must have been an empty threat or maybe pity over came the crew. The flight was held for us and our last team members got on the plane as the flight attendant was closing the door. Okay so we delayed our flight by 5 mins. But now flight the attendant is bringing some drinks around so it's likely time to pause...

...Back now. We've landed in new Orleans at 3pm. It's 34 degrees, feels like 46 with humidity. Resting up and going for dinner in the french quarter. More later.




Sunday august 22: Day 2

As i write this update we are surrounded by heavy rain, lightning and thunder so loud it's rattling the roof... But first....

Last night we got to spend some time sightseeing around New Orleans. First, we checked into our hotel, got a shower, a quick swim, and new clothes. We headed to the centre of town just in time for dinner which meant authentic Cajun and Louisiana cooking. We all split up so I can't vouch for anyone else but I, and many others got a taste of jambalaya. Yummm! After dinner some more sightseeing happened. What a town. We had to tell everyone what Mardi Gras was and that due to some innapropriate content Bourbon street was off limits.

This morning we got to sleep in! We ate together at an ihop, swam some more, really spoiled ourselves. We had one last stop sightseeing in New Orleans. Today most of the Collingwood crew checked out the New Orleans' aquarium. we spent most of the afternoon there before loading the vans to our work area, Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, which is just an hour drive from New Orleans. As we got closer to Bay saint Louis, Katrina damage began to surface. Huge casino halls, shopping malls, gas stations... Damaged. Even after five years roofs have not been replaced-People have essentially abandoned these places. As we arrived in Bay Saint Louis dark omminous clouds began to form and we all had a bizzaar sense of reverence for the area. We drove to the ocean to see the storm come in. The winds picked up, the rain began to teem. Before long we were in a pretty violent storm. We took refuge in a popeyes chicken and bisquits and had dinner and waited the storm out. We found our compound soon after dinner, unloaded and we're briefed on our week ahead. Butch, a worker here explained to us the slow response of the US government and then asked us if we knew who the first on the scene was. We all answerd in unicen the "US army, navy, police?". All wrong. To our amazement it was the RCMP with 13 helicopters. The american workers here expressed deep thanks to us and our help. We are the last group here for the year so we are ending on a very positive note for the Mission on the Bay organization. At the end of our brief thay said, "well, the RCMP we're first on the scene and you guys are last for the year - Canada is a such a huge part in this... More than you'll ever know".

It's 10pm now and we're off to bed - work starts at 7:45am. More tomorrow!!!

Oh by the way all your children are doing great and having the time of thier lives!!

Our team of 23

St. Louis Cathedral

First look at Louisiana cooking - Jambalaya and Muffuleta

The Superdome

Monday August 23 - Day 3

Today we worked! We all got sent out to our placements. Two groups per house. Yup that's where we were private residences. Today a few of us met Jim. He has been on disability since 2001 and has Been struggling with health problems since then. Jim we once a oil rig worker until cancer and heart problems began affecting his life. He re counted when Katrina hit. Although we aren't sure if he and his wife were home at the time or if he evacuated he said that three large trees simultanuously collapsed on his house destroying his kitchen area. He was able to to clean up the mess with the little insurance money he had. He was not able to rebuild, only clean. When I asked him what prevented him from continuing the rebuild he said that his medical bills were just too large. He told me today that his triple bi-pass surgery cost him $180,000. He was finacially ruined. The medial bills began to pile on that as his health need attention. We figure he is close to $300,000 in debt. He told me today that we fully expects to die before his debt is paid off. So, fove years after Katrina jim's house is almost 80% fixed. His kitchen is repaired, his house is near competion. Today our job was to prime his whole house because tomorrow we get paint and give his place some character again. Needless to say we are quite looking forward to painting and actually being a part of the finishing touch on a part of his place. Oddly, as we were leaving jim's place today a massive thunderstorm rolled in. Jim's house is not made of brick and shingles his house was a 4 room house trailer encased in wooden slats and a tin roof. It seems that everywhere we go we are greated by ominous storms, a slight picture of what it was like on the verge of Katrina.
We left jim's around 3:30pm to make it home in time for dinner. After dinner we all jumped into our vans to survey the remnants of Katrina on the coast. What we saw was eerie. Alot of stilts without homes. Most of the homes had been washed away leaving only their foundations. What we found interesting is that the remnants have been smothered in weeds and over growth. Many have just walked away and not looked back.
It's 10pm right now and we have 6am wake up so it's off to bed. Everyone Is still taking care of themselves in this heat - no heat stroke or sun burns at this point. Everyone is doing very well.
Good night!

Copy and paste the link below to see one of the sites we visited tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNemF5AA-mo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Working on the Hall House

Working in Pass Christian

Evidence of Katrina Damage 5 years later in Bay St. Louis. The storm surge came to the base of the cross.

Many properties were abandoned after the storm, reminders of what used to stand along the shoreline roads.

We've got more entries, and I will post a few each day.

Project Serve, Toronto, April 2010

And We're Back!

We arrived safely back home on Saturday night, and I was hoping to post much sooner, but as it would happen, I have been dealing with the after effects of spending March Break with 50 teenagers. I affectionately call this incredibly sore throat "The Outbreak", as many of our staff are feeling similar symptoms. That said, SouthBound 2010 was an incredible trip, and it allowed us many opportunities to connect in significant ways with the youth from Collingwood, and those from around the province.

Particularly cool this year was a change of venue for us. After many years of hosting the camp in Melrose, Florida, we opted to go a little further south to Camp Gilead in Polk City. From the moment we got there, many of us were not only impressed with the grounds, but also with the facilities that were available for us to engage in activities with the youth, and many of them built peer relationships over games of carpetball, dodgeball, and Quarto (which is my new favorite game, read about it here). Our campers are set up in teams that are put together at random, and Aaron and I were privileged to lead Team F, or the Fegyptians as we were better known. Throughout the week we participated in the "Rejected Olympics", which involved many bizarre games and team cheers (ours was oddly similar to that of Team E, the Egyptians, but hey, there are only so many songs about walking like Egyptians out there.)(Our names were complete coincidences, for serious).

We purposely include a lot of free time in our schedule, and most afternoons we have open. This is where a lot of the informal conversations with the youth happen, and where relationships really deepen. That, and we don't mind sitting on the beach, even if we are in winter jackets. Each evening we gather in our teams for small group discussion, which leads into our evening sessions. We were joined by our colleague Kevin, who talked about identity and branding, more specifically, what you express to other people. We had amazing discussions about the masks that we wear, the people that we try to be, and the people that we are. We found this to be an important issue for many of our youth, much like it was for us when we were teenagers. Aaron and I found that the conversations that we had with our youth in small group stretched well into the rest of the week. At one point, one of the guys on our team was walking with us and said, "All that stuff about the masks that we wear, I haven't stopped thinking about it all night!".

One night we had some time that we previously didn't at the last camp (we were significantly closer to Orlando this time). A few leaders wondered if maybe we should host a hot topics session, where the youth could ask the leaders questions. Over twenty youth showed up, and wondered about where God is in the midst of pain and loss, the Bible, terrorism, love, and many other issues that were important to them. The discussion lasted nearly two hours! For sure, this will become a part of our regular schedule.

Overall, this was an incredible trip, and now, I'll leave you with some pictures.

Human Bowling!

By far, one of the more popular activities, the water tube

The whole crew

Team F

Our gang from Collingwood