Camp: Urgent Need for Prayer and Funds

In the past few posts, we have been writing about our opportunity to take students who do not have the personal financial means (many of them orphans) to a mountain camp in northern Romania for a week. As many of you know, the primary reason we came to Romania was to serve at this English/Sports camp. All this week we have been preparing and planning for it, spending evenings building relationships with the 50 or so students, not including ourselves or the Romanian leadership team.

Each year Daniel Vieru sends out support letters all over the world in hopes to provide this camp opportunity to students who would never otherwise have the chance for something like this - in hopes that a week-long trip would build relationships that would change these students lives forever. Every year, he raises thousands of dollars to send these students to camp. Last night, while we were celebrating together over traditional Romanian dinner, he got a much anticipated call from the partner church receiving funds in Minnesota (he had been waiting all week) - the news was not good. He found out that some of the money they were depending on did not come through. We realize now that we are short about what it takes to support about 15-20 students to come to camp. The last 24 hours has been a challenge to say the least. We have considered all the options, including the possibility of canceling the camp. After prayer and discussion as the two teams, we have decided to trust God and move forward with camp preparations in hopes that the financial means would be provided for not just those students who we expect to go, but that every student interested would have the opportunity to participate in camp (regardless of their financial situation).

We then met as the Blackhawk team alone and decided to trust God with this and how to move forward. We have changed some of our plans over the next two days to free up some of our budget to go towards camp and also have considered tithing our own spending money to go towards students at camp. We also wanted to make our church community aware of this situation and give each of you (and the greater body) an opportunity to join us in prayer that all of these students would be able to come to camp. While we understand that many of you have sacrificed much for this trip already, we are also asking that if it is financially possible, you consider giving towards this opportunity as well - whatever that means.

This was included in an email that Kristen Emerson sent out today after we spoke with her:

"Each students registration fee is $175. Consider sponsoring a Romanian student to participate in the week of camp. As you know, we are going to be in a long-term partnership with this camp in Romania, and this would be a way to further strengthen and support their mission. If you could commit to sponsor one student’s participation—or half—or anything, that would really help us out.

The camp starts on Sunday, so if you are considering donating money to sponsor a kid to participate in the life-changing camp, we need to know by Saturday night (yes, in two days). Please email your commitment to kemerson@blackhawkchurch.org by Saturday night at 10 pm *(or earlier), so we can contact the crew in Romania to tell them how many additional students can participate. (We will reply to let you know how to designate the funds; if you want to pay by credit card online, that may be an option.)"

Thank you for everything you've done for us, especially for your prayers - they make a world of difference as we face each day with new blessings and challenges. As for tomorrow - we're off to an early start (just 6 hours from now!) to a project 2 hours south from here on the Romania-Bulgaria border. There is a service day similar to what we do for Madison Missions (doing a range of community service projects) that we will take part in along with our Romanian student-leadership team. There is a concert celebration at the end of the service day. It should be a good day. We hope it further binds us together as a unified team as we serve alongside one-another. We'll hopefully post again tomorrow night. Until then, noapte buna!

-Lief and the team