lunes, 21 de noviembre de 2011

Service Weekend

A few weeks ago at our worship service, called "encuentro," a speaker came and invited us to a Christian camp run by several local churches. The deal was that we could stay there overnight and get free meals in exchange for our labor one day. This past weekend, about 12 of us finally decided to take them up on the offer, and we headed out into the country to see what we would find.

I say "see what we would find" because none of us really knew what to expect in terms of what kind of camp this was, what kind of work we would be doing, and where we would be staying. All we knew is that the camp was about an hour away in a town called "Pedroso" and it was in the mountains. 

When we arrived at the bus stop we were greeted by Richard, one of the main workers at the camp. Richard was only able to take a few people to the camp as he only had a small truck, so the rest of us waited. This action  of meeting a new person who worked at the camp and then taking between 2-5 people repeated itself about 4 times until finally everyone was at the camp. I am still not sure why they did not use a bigger vehicle, but it was funnier this way. 

It was dark when we arrived Friday night, so we did not explore a lot. However, we did get a good look at the stars from an open field and then we got to sit by a fireplace, which was nice considering it was much colder here than in Sevilla. 

Our group had a huge room filled with a few smaller rooms that had several bunk beds in them. In my room there was...Luke and Mark of course, the only other guys. It got pretty cold at night, but I was smart enough to bring a bunch of blankets from home so I was fine. However, I did not know that Luke did not have a blanket all night and I felt pretty selfish when I woke up in the morning to find out he had suffered through the night in the cold. 

Saturday morning, we woke up to a light drizzle. However, after a quick  breakfast it was soon raining much harder, but this did not stop us from working. We walked to the fields of the camp where we saw farm animals of all kinds. As we walked to our site, we saw a flock of sheep, one of which was a two-day-old black sheep. We also saw two huge dogs named Princessa and Bruto, or Princess and Brute. 

Being the only guys there, we had the task of cleaning out a room that they were currently renovating. We had to lift a bunch of random stuff including mirrors, beds and tiles into a truck and bring them into another building. Meanwhile, the girls whitewashed the walls of the room we were cleaning out. By the end, we were very wet but we finished the job. 

Finally, we got to enjoy a great meal together. My favorite part of the meal was croquetas, something Isabel has made us before that kind of tastes like a chicken pot pie fried into little balls. There are different types, but these were chicken. I am used to only having a few, but we had a huge platter and of course the girls did not eat very many of them so I had all the croquetas I wanted for once. While at the camp, I also tried mussels, which looked bad but tasted a lot like fish. 

On the drive back, we were all quite tired and wet, but I think everyone had a good time doing something different for a weekend and happy that we were able to help out some very nice people. 

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