A bright, sunny day, in the morning at least, and lots to be thankful for. But the children continue to be difficult—not all of them, of course, but enough to make it noteworthy.
We have a bit of a breakthrough this evening. One of the stated goals for the trip is that the team members would get a realistic view of missions. Frankly, that’s very difficult to do in 3 weeks, because adrenaline can take you that far, and kids can come home still all flush with excitement about how “great” missions is—“Just awesome! Life-changing!” and be convinced that God has called them to be missionaries to whatever field it was they so briefly and artificially visited.
That’s a little bit like falling in love with that little red-haired girl at Camp Wanamucket the third week of July.
Could happen. But not likely.
I prefer the 8-week trips I used to do, because they’re longer and more tiring, and they get you past the adrenaline phase.
Well, Camp Tumaini 
has gotten this group through the adrenaline phase in less than three weeks.
Good.
There are a few children here who are particularly challenging—for different reasons—and our tutoring schedule this time has had most of the tutors with the same child(ren) pretty much every session. If you have one of those particularly challenging ones, that can wear you down.
The team is feeling that tonight.
Now. You can respond to that in one of two ways.
You can grit your teeth and just hang on, do whatever’s necessary to get through the next 48 hours and get home to a steak and tap water you can drink and Dr. Pepper and “normal” life.
Or you can finish well. You can persevere, knowing that hard stuff brings endurance, and endurance brings experience, and experience brings more confidence next time, and confidence brings victory (Rom 5.4-6).
But you can’t do that by gritting your teeth. In fact, you can’t do it at all, most obviously when your strength is gone.
God has to do that. It’s supernatural.
And so the next two days are the climax of the trip, the time when the most lasting and intense spiritual growth occurs.
Would you join us in praying that that would happen? Enduring through to the end has great benefit, both now and in the future. We’d love to see that demonstrated in us by our gracious God.
Many thanks.
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