Rome trip w/Seniors

Here's a sampling of shots from the recent senior trip Diane and I helped lead. The kids were amazingly well behaved and bonded so well as a class. The bus rides were long but the sights were amazing. Georgeous weather all week with lots of swim time.

Nothing like the fried potatoeds in Florence!

I loved hearing my students discuss what we had covered in class
regarding the School of Athens.

Love the photo stance!

Esther amazed at St. Peter's.

I didn't realize this was so vivid until I saw what the flash brought out.

St. Peter's at night.

Three Hannahs

One Hannah and one Anna.

Quintessential Rome.

Diane scoping out decorations for her office.

Diane catching Hannah and her buddy in front of Constantine's Arch.

We kept running into this guy all over Rome - he was amazing - jazz accordion!

The beach across from our one star hotel.

Ostia Antica - very cool place - once >100,000 lived here - recently excavated

Wandering the alleyways of Venice while Diane tended a sick student.

Venice's Rialto at night.

Back in High School

Well, Diane and I have come full circle. Thirty-seven years ago we met in a high school Social Studies class after the teacher moved my seat for reasons we won't discuss here. We became friends, then more than friends, attended separate colleges (successfully), married, raised four children, held jobs, bought and sold houses, became missionaries, became grandparents, all the usual and some of the unusual things - but now, as we said, we've come full circle. We're back sitting next to each other in a high school classroom and studying German. It's no longer col to be the oldest kids in class.

German, we hear, is a logical language - so far the logic escapes us. We're hearing terms like "dative" and "accusative" - can you even remember what that stuff refers to from your days in English class? People say English is quirky - and it is - but it's also oftentimes economical. Take the article "the" for instance. In English we say, "the boy, the girl, the boys, the girls, the cow, the herd, the watermelon, the crop, the cell, the cells, the organ, the limb, the body, the family, the community, the state, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, the mind of God". What a useful word "the" is. German is logical so this language says, " der Junge, die Jungen, das Mädchen, die Mädchen, die Kuh, die Herde, die Wassermelone, die Ernte, die Zelle, die Zellen, die Orgel, das Bein, des Körpers, der Familie, der Gemeinschaft, des Staates, das Land, dem Kontinent, die Halbkugel der Erde (literally - half scoop of earth!), des Sonnensystems, der Galaxie, das Universum, der Geist Gottes. Der, die, das - and we're not even talking about the prepositional variations as yet!

But - it is good to begin to formerly work on this language because it is not one that just gets absorbed by hanging around German speakers and there is progress. It's just hard for the half century plus brain to exercise cells that have lain domant for so long. The great motivtion, besides better understanding this place and culture we live in and besides making life all around a bit easier, is Diane and I get to compete on test and quiz scores.

Well, gotta study now!

BFA's back in action

The Senior Parade!
Hear no evil, speak no evil - or is it just amazement that they're seniors?
You can only carry off the white belt look if your family works in Italy.
BFA is a strange and wonderful place - look at the smiles because school is starting!



BFA held its opening day last week. Traditions run hard here so it began with the procession of Seniors carrying the flags of many nations followed by the less colorful (but with way more straight lines) teaching, support and dorm staffs. As the roster of forty plus nations currently hosting the families of our student was read, cheering of various volumes rose up, largely dependent on the number of students directly involved. The United States rang loudest as most of our kids hold US passports. My seventy-six seniors have families working in twenty-eight countries. I polled my students and had them list the countries that they had personally lived in for a period of greater than six months. Fifty-seven different nations were tallied. By most accounts, there are currently 195 nations in the world. How big is the impact of Black Forest Academy? You do the math!

School now means for me (Russ) the dance of developing classroom climates and relationships that will allow my Worldviews classes to transcend the sharing of information and arrive at the place of spiritual and life in general growth. Pray for the tone and spirit to be conducive to real sharing and challenge and maturity. Pray for insight and wisdom as each class develops. Pray for kids to have the courage to examine their own faith worlds and recognize the beauty of Christ for themselves.

It feels great to have classes back I front of me! I love teaching these guys and Diane and I love being involved in other aspects of their lives. The big deal, coming up one month from now, is the fulfillment of our duties as Senior Class sponsors – we “have to” go with them to Rome for Senior trip!

This weekend is filled with a conference for classroom teachers to be held in the beautiful Alpine town of Adelboden. Two full weeks of classes connected by a weekend conference doesn’t really sound very conducive to rest. I say this because for the first time in about six months, Diane and I had a relaxing (not a whole lot on the gotta do right now list) weekend and it was fabulous! We didn’t do much of anything really special (well, we showed our friends the Shumans around the local hot baths) – we mostly just relaxed. I guess that’s why I’m a little less than eager to go away and "do" this weekend – we need more down time. God is good, it will come.

All over

All Camp
These guys kept us fed - who will next year?
Our counselors.
Our translators
Our funniest camper - X

All Staff photo
Our graduates - next year they'll be too old. One asked, "How come no English Camp for 18-year-olds?" That is a very good question!
The now annual traditional auction of "stuff" paid for by "Teekets" earned all week long.
Here I got to share the story of one of my Iraqi refugee contacts in Jordan who once believedGod could not exist and who now knows that He does - the topic, "What is real?"

Well, I've not updated in a few days. This is largely due to the sheer busyness and fatigue of the last few days of any given English Camp. There's the basics of camp itself - all the closing activities (talent shows, banquets, bonfires, etc) midst the point of greatest community (meaning campers and staff alike have lost all ability to refrain from acting crazy! and valuable spiritual milestones are often reached). Then there are the practical bits - paperwork, pick-ups and drop-offs, cleaning, lots more cleaning, then some cleaning, the staff trip to Freiburg (dinner at Martin's Brau - if you're ever in Freiburg, it's a great place), materials and linens returned to base, some more cleaning. The emotional toll of balancing relief that camp is over with saying goodbye to those staff and campers who have been part of your life for the past 216-314 hours during an intensive time is also exhausting.

Then you have the episodes that come from nowhere - the camper mentioned earlier returned to camp after one ambulance ride and day in the hospital only to repeat the trip the following day (camp's last full day). Pray that God would use this in his life. The drama of it all did help focus camp in important and healthy ways.

But is is so worth it. Staff and campers alike leave changed. God has been at work. The gospel was delivered over nine nights and days to 100 campers. One of our third year campers - a guy who has got it rough family wise, who came to camp 3 years ago hating the idea of a "religious" camp, who fell in love with the love he felt at camp (he gave testimony before this next fact for longer than the evening message took), finally professed to giving his life to Christ (as did others). Pray for this "J" and for another "J" who thought she wasn't good enough for God and the others who came to faith - pray that God would make it so real in their lives and that churches could be found for them and so many of our other campers without good church homes.

Like I said - It is so worth all the time and money and hard work. Pray for us that we could recover to face the school year ready. We're weekending near Grenoble, France to attend a wedding and staff conferences start next week (well, actually they started this week but for self-preservation and with permission, I'm missing most of those).

Thanks to all who've read these and prayed for, given to, or served at (Did I mention the incredible staff we had?) English Camp Wittlingen (or any of the other camps) this year.

The top photo shows two young "drop-ins" to our evening meeting time. They were drawn in by the strength of the talent exhibited in the next photo (third year in a row that "Tell Me Why" was performed just to show you the enduring legacy of the Back Street Boys). The next two shot are from pool day - a perfect afternoon for it - but then the morning was a different story.

Gloria, one of our very your but very dedicated and talented translators spent the morning with myself and one of the campers at the local hospital after the camper was wisked off in an ambulance due to some sort of attack that involved severe abdominal pains and hyper-ventilation. He's ok - we actually brought him back to camp about 10PM and the boys gave him a big welcome. The first words he said at the hospital after regaining responsiveness were, "Will I be able to go back to English Camp" and, "Why would God allow let this sort of thing happen to me?" So that leaves us with the encouragement of how much the campers love camp and a classic difficulty of the faith.

Well, that's about all I'm good for writing tonight.

Adventure Day

Here are scenes of this morning performances of Bible stories - can you guess which ones?

We spent the afternoon at BFA going games along with the other 2 camps, followed by a joint worship/teaching time. I got to play the role of the visiting philosopher discussing the question of "What is real?" as I did two weeks ago during the previous EC sessions. The kids are pretty wired tonight so we hope they'll settle down for room time with their counselors.

Tomorrow we're off to the pool after morning classes. There's talk of a talent show but very few signed up as yet.

Pray that the "breakthrough" moments will continue.

Well, I have had easier days at English Camp. Today, for the first time in seven camps, I had to send someone home. After days of breaking virtually every rule of the camp and repeated interventions by multiple staff members, I was convinced it was time. Pray that the climate of the camp would not suffer for this - there are some good things happening - real progress with both repeat and new campers.

As you can see from today's pictures, we've had some worship time (we do that every evening) and we've had some "visitors". There was a brief appearance by Heidi (one of our counselors who brought along her dirndl) and the return of the legendary Ricki - a veteran of 3 previous camps (that's him in the mullet wig). His former campers that are attending are thrilled to see him - he's spending the night- and we are too (both thrilled and sending the night).

Tomorrow is a break in the "routine" (nothing is routine at EC) for "Adventure Day".