Christmas Celebrations!

Hello again everyone! It’s been an incredible first semester and we are excited for all of you to see the growth in the students as they head out for Christmas break on Tuesday. We are going to miss all of them so much, but January will come sooner than we are expecting.

This week has been busy in terms of activities, we are gearing up for Christmas! On Tuesday we took all of the students to a Christmas tree farm in Duncan We were allowed to choose the type of tree we wanted for our lobby (Douglas fir!) and then choose our tree.

We had spent the morning making Christmas decorations so it was a lot of fun to hang each of our personalities on the tree and take pictures. I’m not sure there is much more enjoyable at Christmas time than a Christmas tree hung near the fireplace. So we’ve found it’s increased the amount of homework being done in our lobby as well as the amount of carols we have heard played around camp.

That evening we had our Qwanoes Christmas banquet and enjoyed an amazingly cooked Turkey dinner. We also dressed up and had to take lots of pictures of ourselves.

 We also enjoyed our talent show that evening. It was a special time of enjoying each other and the gifts that God has given us. While the evening was very heavy on inside jokes, we were treated to a number of memorable acts. Highlights of the night included the girls’ Carly Rae Jepsen dance, a Hawaiian Christmas Carol and a reworded Christmas carol that intended to embarrass a certain intern (Ashley). It was a wonderful, full day and we once again felt so blessed to have everyone here. I can’t imagine what this year would look like with even one student missing so we are more than grateful to God for orchestrating bringing each one here.

The next day we thought it would be wonderful to spend some time separately as both the guys and girls went off their own ways.

The guys spent some time bowling and then went back to the camp for a pizza party and video games night. 

The girls spent some time doing Zumba in town and then went back to the camp’s guest house for some cheesecake and a sleepover. It was a great time had by both genders and we are extremely grateful for how God has given us each other.

I'll wrap up here, but it's been great to have so many things to tell people about all that is going on, I'm only scratching the surface. Please ask for all the stories while they're home and you'll be treated to a number of really good ones!

We all know how much we’re going to miss all of the students, so we can only imagine how excited many of you are to have them home.

Derek