Day 1 with SWBC

I must say, day one was great success. We started off with a brief expectations chit-chat so the kids and leaders could talk about what they hoped for on the trip and what they may struggle with on the trip. Overall, the unknown portion of SPLAT was the most intimidating but SPLAT staff gave some great encouragement to ease all the fears (or some anyhow).

After, we had our first fun event, The Real Sim World, where kids got to plan, purchase, and build their own towns within a larger city. The groups had a lot of hardships and advantages that were not always fair. In the end, they found out that the game was rigged. Certain towns received much higher benefits while others were neglected by the city officials. The purpose of this game was to help them realize how difficult life can be, how diverse we all are, and how even if we are from different areas it is important to love and care for everyone.

In the later evening, we did a bit of group worship and devotional where we talked about our Bible character for this trip, Paul. The life of Paul is a long, adventurous tale that we will not be 'telling' to the group, we will be living it each day. We hope that the group will learn from experience on this SPLAT trip.

Then, we ate ice cream. :)

More to come,
Lauren