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Septembre 2000

Hi everybody !

Itīs 2 years ago that I was waiting to hear from a ship called Anastasis if they could get a place in the OCTOBER 1998 DTS for me. And surprisingly just a few days before the 2nd of October ( 10 days!!!) I got a call from Judith and... you know how it ended up! I canīt believe that 1,5 years went by after DTS- it was such a precious time!
I think I already told you in one of the last letters that I was going to be in the staff of two summer camps:

The four weeks with the young people were amazing- first two weeks in Scotland ( around 1,5 hour drive to Edinburgh) and after 4 days of catching up with sleep 2 weeks in Norway ( in the middle of nowhere but in a beautiful area surrounded by blueberry bushes- mh, yummie).

So letīs start with Scotland : this one took place in a schoolbuilding, a beautiful old house. I felt very comfortable with the other leaders and we as a team had fun, too. The young people were around 15-19 years- by the way the same age like on the other camp. For biblestudies we had some passages from Paulīs letters and we all meet first to get a short( or maybe longer) input and than splitted in smallgroups to talk about the text, some questions and what else came up. In the afternoons we had different possibilities for the teens to chose on their own what they wanted to do- some were creative things to do, others like sports or christian topics to which we taught some stuff and talked about ( like " Godīs plan for my life" or " Life after school"...). In the evenings we had some more topics ( relationships...) or just fun. Like this the days passed by and I got to know some very nice people.
Challenging was to get my smallgroup to answer the questions and just talk. I donīt know what the matter was but it was quite hard to ask in a way so they would not only give an answer in one sentence and look than like they were totally bored ( okay, I exaggerate a little bit). I learned again that just teaching and talking in front of a group and making it really interesting, is not so much one of my best gifts. But I also learned about my more matured gifts ( like just being there, listening or motivating people...). We had two trips- one to the Highlands and one to Edinburgh. THe best thing is that although it was a camp for young Christians who want to learn more about God, there were some who didnīt believe and were brought by friends; and those- two girls who were in my smallgroup- became Christians!!! Isn`t God good?

And after that the camp to Norway was coming with totally new people, a new staff ( only one guy who also was on both), new challenges... and this one was even better! I had an easier time to get to know people and being closer to them. Probably just because we didnīt have that many like in Scotland ( Scotland: Youth 42 and 10 staff-people, Norway: 24 young people and 8 from the staff).
The programme was quite like the one I described above, only with biblestudy topic " Jesus meets people" and more the basic stuff because it was a missionary camp. Near the house ( 20 minutes walk) we had a lake with really clear water where we could swim and go canoeing. We did a survivaltour to a hill where we walked a part through the wood without having any path, slept under the cloudy sky and woke up the next morning to find out that it started to rain. THe whole way back it was raining cats and dogs! But I also saw an elk with a small one in a distance : )
Another time some of us went to the lake to sleep there between the blueberries. This time with millions of stars right above us and lots of shooting stars.
And also on this camp we could see God at work: two young men- good friends for years- came to Christ. It was so awesome to watch them coming closer, asking questions that showed how much GOD HAD ALREADY WORKED in them and than deciding to walk with God!

Funny was how we went to wake the teens every morning with a song. It was totally strange to find out that a lot were already awake- normally the staff has to "beat" them out of their beds. In Norway we even had our fan-club: the girlīs corridor. They threw flowers over us and so on. That really helped to get a good start, even when I was still very tired in the mornings.

It was so good to finally use all the stuff we learned in DTS.
There is so much more to tell you about but I close it at this point.
I still have some time till university starts in the mid of October and thatīs good because I can write already a part of my report about the camps for university ( itīs also a practical thing I did for uni). At the end of september three of my friends and me are going to " Awake Europe" , a conference here in Germany. Iīm excited how itīs going to be.
I have such a lot of things to praise God and thank Him for. The situation with my friends is better now and I start to accept it that it is not so easy to live in Marburg during my studies and to be inbetween back in Kassel. For all of us the situation is just very different to what we had before.
I really hope that I get the chance to see some of you soon.

God bless you and a big hug from me!

Your sister in Christ, Ulli