I have pictures to post from the last month or so, but I will get to those later. For now I wanted to post about camp! We are working together with the Anconetani family to raise money for refugees by hosting a summer camp. The story of how it came to be is kind of long, but I will write about it at the end of this post. We are two days into camp and having a blast! On Thursday we are working together with as many people as we can to host a bake sale, so it is a busy week. The kids have worked hard and are doing a great job.
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| The first day we had 24 campers (including our own and youth counselors). |
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| Ethan and Layla were in charge of the animal station :). |
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| We start out camp with free play time and we have different activities out they can do if they want. |
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| It has been so nice having youth counselors. They are a big help with everything, especially helping out with the youngest kids. |
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| Snack time |
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| After free time we have 3 planned activities for them to do. On the first day Hannah was in charge of the sand art activity. |
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| Andrew and Luca did a fun obstacle course activity. |
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| Our counselors did a sidewalk chalk/beanbag toss activity. |
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| On day 2 we made t-shirts for one of our activities. |
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| We were blessed to have a family donate 500 filled water balloons. Andrew and Luca were in charge of that activity the 2nd day and here they are with the bigger kids about to get started. We are so grateful for all of the help and donations! |
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| Mud pie making :) |
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| It was supposed to rain this morning which we were sad about because it was water day but our prayers were answered and the weather was beautiful! |
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| The second group lining up for water balloons. |
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| water and bubble fun |
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| I love how the shirts turned out. |
The story of how camp came to be:
Last April a lot was said in General Conference about helping others, specifically refugees (
here is an article about it). As our family reviewed conference we tried to find the things we were asked to do and figure out a way to do them. I love conference and have felt the blessings many times from applying what is taught to my life. I go into it with a prayer that I will receive guidance for the things I need help with, which is often parenting, and then I look for how that prayer is answered. As a family we talked about how helping refugees was something we should do. It stayed on my mind but we didn't get to it for a while.
In the meantime life went on. I love my kids, and feel they are good kids, but I don't do a great job of helping them see how good things are for them and so they take a lot for granted. When they are surrounded with so many things, and love, and safety, and then they complain about how terrible their life is (in some moment when they didn't get what they wanted), I wish for them to get a glimpse of how millions of children around the world are living in situations that can be really terrible. I want for them to look outside themselves and see the needs of others and have a desire to help...because that is how they will truly be happy.
One day I was reading a blog that I often read for some uplifting (71 toes.com), and I read
this post about the go jane give website. I checked out the website and knew this was how we could help. I talked to Daniel and the kids about it and they liked the idea. I also talked about it with my good friend Niki and she was excited for her family to do it with us. We wanted the kids to get as involved as possible so they could feel the joy that comes from serving others. We talked with them about refugees and they wanted to help.
This video personalized it for everyone. We realized these were families just like ours who were going through a really hard time. We started planning and decided to do a summer camp and a bake sale. The kids helped make a video to tell others what we were doing and to ask for help.
Click here to watch it. We are excited that we have had a lot of support. As we told our kids, this isn't too big of a deal for us, but for the families that are receiving these donations it could be a very big deal. It will be food and medicine and hopefully some safety.
We would love all of the help we can get to reach our goal of raising $1500. If you would like to donate go to our Go Jane, Give site
here. Any size donation is helpful. You could have your kids bake something and sell it to a neighbor who wants to help. We could start a chain of mini bake sales :). If you live in the area please come to our bake sale Thursday morning and spread the word!
