We arrived in Armenia early Wednesday morning, June 10, and had three days in the city of Yerevan. We spent time chatting about summer plans with Pete and Schell Alexander, Young Life Armenia camp project managers. We also helped out with Young Life's English Club and met some of the staff there (photos here: https://www.facebook.com/sue.bouwense)
We are now settling in to “The White House” in Hankavan
Valley, our home until mid-August. We arrived Saturday afternoon and set to
work: Schell and I cleaned bedrooms and made beds; Maxine mowed the lawn; and
Doug, Caleb and Pete handled lofty tasks like fixing the 2nd floor
key, installing the water tank on the hill and running pipe to the house, and
adjusting the fuel feed on the lawn mower.
Sunday involved shopping in Hrazdan (which proved to be
challenging—Schell couldn’t get her credit card to work at the grocery store,
AND they only have about 50% of the product that was available last year). The
Alexanders have a saying: “TIA (This Is Armenia),” which means basically that
it is what it is, so get used to it!
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| Doug and Pete tinker with a generator after lightning knocked out the power to the White House |
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| Getting ready for some serious demolition work |
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| Pete explains the plan for the new camp dining room. The view of the river valley from the windows is so beautiful! |
Our co-workers for the next six weeks, along with the Alexanders, are Caleb, a student who is also from Michigan (YES!) but attends
school in Florida; and sisters Maxine and Raquel, who are Armenian Americans
from Pennsylvania. They range in age from 19 – 21, and they are the greatest!
They are willing, gracious workers and a joy to have around. Raquel is off
this week working with a medical mission group in a couple of different clinics
in Armenia, and we look forward to meeting up with her again on Sunday.
Now that we are situated here we went over yesterday to
assess what needs to be done at the camp, which is directly across the road
from us. Pete gave me, Doug, Caleb and Maxine a tour to show which buildings
are staying and which will be torn down. We were given an exciting vision of
what the camp will be after Phase III. Pete promises it will be the most
beautiful, inviting camp in the valley (and there are a few other camps nearby,
including a FIFA [soccer] camp and another Christian camp).
We are also looking ahead to hosting other workers. There will be a structural engineer coming
this week to help out; he is the one that assessed all of the buildings to see
which were capable of surviving an earthquake. We will also be joined by some of the Young
Life staff from Yerevan this week.
Please pray for patience for us American types, who tend to
expect that things will happen as planned and that progress will be readily visible, in
spite of power outages, legal snafus, and workers that might not show up when
they promised. Our prayer here has been that we learn to trust God with the
details, and just be willing to work in his time frame. Please join us in praying for that, as well
as for safety as we do demolition work at the camp.
I hope to be sending some pictures of progress at the camp,
as well as some of our travel adventures in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
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| Found in one of the buildings: a poster from the camp's beginning days as a Soviet Young Pioneer camp |
It is VERY interesting to me that they are re-purposing this Soviet Union camp which was built specifically to "brainwash" youth into a place where God's work will be done. It's a little picture of how God works. Love it.
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