UrbanPromise Olympics!

Tomorrow marks the start of the first annual UrbanPromise After School Program Olympics! Mike, Dana and Albert (all new directors this year!) have teamed together and created a week full of fun activities. All of the junior high camps will join together at each other's sites and participate in crazy games (pretty disgusting ones, too!), devotionals and team-building activities. The theme this year is "One"...one heart, one hope, one love, one people (or something to that effect). The goal is to begin to bring healing amongst the camps from years of being pitted against each other in competitions. For some reason, Urban has thought it a good idea to create that competition, and unfortunately (but not surprisingly to us outsiders) it has ended up breeding a lot of dis-harmony and strong dis-like between the kids. Mike, Dana and Albert want to begin the process of teaching acceptance and understanding amongst the kids as there is already so much disharmony among the city, we don't need to be breeding it in our ministry.

There are so many vast differences in the lifestyles of the people from one area of the city to the next. I'll have to have Michael post about this in more detail, it's really fascinating. So the kids understandably have a lot of pre-set notions of what the kids from other areas are like. Hopefully this week will begin to open their eyes and allow them to see each other for who they really are, not for what they have been told they are. The kids will be on mixed teams, kids from all different camps on the same team. Pray for energy, understanding and harmony this week!