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Getting ready for our last night. This afternoon our community are cooking a three course lamb dinner, decorating the rooms, planning a reflection and organizing games. Tonight we will have Capture the Flag and Mafia; there may be injuries. Meanwhile, Jonny and Rob have been painting stones #Cre8atcamas
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Iron Man awards ! Tonight we will have our Iron Man Award 2015 presentation at Camas, there are eight winners this year; 2 girls, 3 lads and 3 leaders. To win this prestigious hand-made award, young people and adults have experienced the pain and exhilaration of swimming in the sea at Camas, wearing only a swimming costume, before breakfast ie before 8am. This year, the sea was particularly refreshing, especially when it was raining and there was no water for a hot shower afterwards. Jonny introduced this year's competition after we arrived on Saturday with the immortal words "pain is temporary but glory is eternal". Amen !#Cre8atcamas Our Iona beach. A wonderful day, thank you for the sunshine#Cre8atcamas Sharing food. Everyone eats together at Camas; visitors, volunteers and staff. The anchor is rung, we gather upstairs and the meal is opened. We all share the same meal, cooked by one of the Camas volunteers or staff, sometimes with young people's help. Vegetables and fruit might come from the Camas garden, everything else is brought down the track in wheelbarrows, a thirty-five minute walk across the moor. Yesterday we ate the fish we caught. Hattie, a nineteen year old Camas volunteer, made amazing fish cakes with vegetables, followed by fruit crumble and custard, she cooked for thirty five of us. We think Hattie is a superstar : )#Cre8atcamas Beach ! Yesterday afternoon's walk to Market Bay. We played non-violent games including beach wrestling, sea football, grab onto the giant floating log in the sea, bury Matt in the sand and everyone jump on Tom.#Cre8atcamas Dolphins ! We've seen porpoises here before, but never Dolphins, they were HUGE. We saw them twice, once from the Camas boat and also later when John and Rob were out sailing. There was a pod of eight to ten animals, a mixture of what looked like adults, which were brown in colour, and younger animals swimming alongside. They looked to be darker in colour. We following the pod, they would turn towards the boat, come close and then turn away again. Aaron was keen to identify the dolphins and show us his discoveries in a book when we got back to Camas. He spent nearly an hour reading about Dolphins, quietly on his own. If you knew Aaron you would know how precious this is. Aaron 'doesn't read'. We didn't invite Aaron to come with us to Camas when he first started at Cre8 six years ago because we couldn't be sure that Aaron would do what he was asked to do, in other words we assessed him as being too high a risk, you could say dangerous. We never allowed Aaron to come with a group to Camas when he was a teenager. Now he's twenty and he's a young leader at Cre8. He's brilliant and it's been a joy to have him with us this week. Thanks Aaron, you've made us smile : ) #Cre8atcamas  It's not all fun and games. From the posts on here it might seem as though it is..... just fun and games, but it's not. There are things that happen here that shouldn't and sometimes we come close to arranging for someone to be sent home. Youth work is about dealing with the unwelcome things that come along, while keeping your eyes fixed clearly on the goal. Not the short term goal, but the thing that you are trying to create, maybe over months or years. The goal in Cre8's eyes is to live well in community, just as G_d commands us to do. To do this we know that we have to live in love and peace with each other, this is not always easy when you are living with sixteen teenagers four hundred miles from home. Teenagers nearly always have their own personal 'stuff' to deal with. It doesn't matter where they were born or what their life experience in childhood has been; teenagers all have 'stuff'. But in addition to this stuff, which gets in the way of being happy and getting on with growing up, many of the young people involved with Cre8 have other hurts. These can lead to anxieties and other symptoms which can make living together volatile and difficult. As leaders and volunteers, we try to keep everyone feeling ok. We do our best to keep the young people looking beyond their own individual selves, to look outside themselves and towards the needs of each other and of living together in a positive, supportive and loving community. This is not easy when squabbles (or worse) break out. This is when the going gets tough, when all our skills are called for and when we work together as a team; we have to, good teamwork is essential. Constantly, we put our efforts into 'being with' the young people; to encourage, celebrate, challenge, discipline and console them. Being quick to challenge them when they aren't 'good' with each other, and being quick to encourage and thank them at other times, when things are good and smiles are everywhere. Fun, laughter, helpfulness, kindness, consideration and compassion. Fun and games, not always, but more than sometimes.  We are sailing. Camas is surrounded by the beautiful clear blue sea of the West Coast of Scotland. We swim in it, kayak in it, jump into it and on occasions we also get to sail on it. Iona community member Mark Jardine has this wonderful traditional sailing boat called Birthe Marie which he brings round to Camas and picks us up to go sailing. Today the conditions were perfect, light winds, sunshine and a calm sea. So we went fishing. Mark lives on Iona where he was brought up, he restored the boat himself over several years and takes visitors for trips during the summer. But Mark also likes young people, he used to work here at Camas and he always makes room to do young people's trips during his busy summer. It's one of the ways we really benefit from the Iona Community and its commitment to disadvantaged young people. We're thankful#Cre8atcamas Making fire. No matches, lighters, petrol or paper. And it's been raining for two days YES #Cre8atcamas   |
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