Nehemiah, one of the counsellors (you can tell Mary Beth is writing this post as she uses the Canadian-preferred double 'l'!) at Equestrian Camp this year, regaled his campers with stories of how he had grown up without parents, started working at 6 years old and joined the gangs in Lima. He told how he then committed his life 100% to the Lord because of a brain operation he had that was supposed to leave him paralyzed and with limited mental capacity. Now he dreams of returning to university and becoming a missionary. During one of our Bible Study lessons I asked the campers to give an example of someone who had learned perseverance, character and hope through suffering (Rom. 5:2-5), one of them said ‘Nehemiah’. I asked, ‘Nehemiah from the Bible?’ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘Nehemiah the counsellor’. I thought she had given a very good example.
The campers, counsellors and their horses (Mary Beth in orange)
Nehemiah also encouraged his campers to learn the art of fire-making from scratch by hacking up a big old tree and using it to cook a 'Huatia', a traditional Peruvian highland dish where food (generally meat and potatoes) is laid over very hot coals and covered in a pile of dirt. It is left to cook for an hour (in our case half an hour because we had less meat and more veggies) and then unburied and eaten for supper. Ours was delicious and devoured very quickly.
