Hold on for one more day

The last day of camp is tomorrow. We’ve planned our book event at the park and I think it will turn out well. And if not, at least it will be over tomorrow! We went to the National Constitution Center today. It really wasn’t that great, especially for young kids. We saw a “play” which consisted of one guy talking and some b-roll behind him. Surrounding the theater was the main exhibit which only took about 30 minutes to walk through. The best part was a portion called Signer’s Hall which had life-sized statues of all the signers of the Constitution. I took some pictures of the kids with the statues.

After we figured out that there was nothing left to do there we walked across the street to Franklin Park which had a really neat playground and a beautiful fountain. Here are two more campers on a neat interpretation of a seesaw.

I’m supposed to be writing a reflection paper about the whole experience on Philadelphia. It’s a lot to think about and it’s always easier to think of the negative things than the positive ones. The truth is it hasn’t been an easy summer. There’s been a lot of challenges and a lot of adjustments. I’ve felt out of place and unneeded while also feeling desperately necessary. I would like to think that I’ve grown and changed because of the summer. Two apparent and important developments that have been made are my discovering to pursue a career in nursing and the experience of becoming a part of such a diverse community. In my conversations with Pastor Kopp he asked me what I learned about service as a whole. I’m not exactly sure if I learned too much. One thing I can say is that you must really put all of yourself into the service you’re doing. Otherwise you are depriving yourself as well as the person you are serving. Depriving them of the light of God inside of you and depriving you of the light that lies within them. It’s the connection between people based on caring that makes a real difference. Whenever you do short term mission it seems that there are four obvious but significant portions of the trip. You must jump in, make a connection, show caring through service, and gracefully goodbye. I say “jump in” because in short term mission you can’t waste time feeling uncomfortable. It is important to establish yourself as part of the group as much as possible. That leads to making a connection. It’s better to make individual connections with people rather than viewing your service as something to a mass of people. Through that individuality you can really show caring as you identify the personal needs of others. The graceful goodbye is the part that I feel that I will be experiencing for the first time. Pastor Kopp really stressed “the importance of our comings and goings” and he’s right. To properly dignify the relationships that I’ve made here it is important to let everyone know that they’ve made an impact on my life. In the past I haven’t been very good at goodbyes and I’m realizing that’s something I need to work on.