Camp Orientation

Camp Mennoscah
MVSers from all over the US met up for camp/orientation at camp Mennoscah near Witchita, KS. We were lucky and only had to drive 3 hours instead of fly over from San Francisco or New York like other MV's. I love being with my roommates. All four of us girls drove together and talked about life and funny stories to politics and denomenational backgrounds. When I got to camp, I found out that just about everyone doing this program is completely incredible. It's interesting how much in common you have with people who are strangers but are joined by a similar passion to volunteer for a year with the underprivilidged, and love Jesus.

We were trained for half-days in conflict management for our "units" aka- communal houses, the finance workings of Mennonite Mission Network, the Americore paperwork, cross-cultural differences, adaptation for our diverse neighborhoods, and a full day was devoted to anti-racism training. It was all really important, and was mostly just discussions and reading articles or stories. We made timelines since the beginning of the US to today of negative racial movements (segregated schools, hate crimes, slavery, etc.) and the positive forces working against them (underground railroad, Rosa Parks, Emancipation proclamation, jazz, etc.). We even read about the Mennonite's decision to stay out of the civil rights movement and how they are not involved enough today in desegregating in many places and ways. I realized I know SO little about the history of the US and its influences on anti-racism today. One of the most interesting articles we read and discussed was called "I am not your diversity". It discussed how patronizing it is to go the other direction- simply want people of different ethnicities at our churches, speaking at conferences, or entering our communities only to increase 'diversity' for a self-serving relief of guilt, or a cheap and lazy way of increasing stats or yet again reinstating the power of the majority. If someone is asked to speak at an event to 'increase diversity' this is still going only skin deep, and is in no way a compliment to the individual! We are to make a point of learning and adapting to cultures, understanding people, working out relationships, finding their beauty and facing our own stereotypes and prejudices. It changed my thinking before coming back to a very multi-cultured neighborhood and job (which I still haven't started yet, not until after labor day).

Other than the training, we played a lot of games basically! Soccer, ultimate frizbee, volleyball, ping-pong, and group games like 4 on a couch, and screaming ninjas (if you don't know what it is- find out! It's great!), and played card games all evening! There was a pool to swim in everyday with a diving board to flip and jump off of. If you know me at all, you know that it was my kind of camp!! On the last night of camp, us girls (there were probably 25 of us) had a great little bonding time together with some empowering convo : ) In the meantime the guys didn't know what to do with themselves so they set us up an outdoor dance party. This lasted quite a few hours of wonderfulness under lightning and the stars! We were all sweaty and drained by the time the threat of a big storm came on the news. We had a bonfire with smores and it trickled some rain- that was it for my first midwest storm! Apparently it missed us.