Image: Aida (right) took part in the camp. Remember the interview with her in the August-September magazine, where she told how she and her husband had cleaned up the blood of her martyred father-in-law? Read the interview Here...
By Tobias Lyster Kjøller
My trip to Kyrgyzstan started with a children's camp for poor children from surrounding villages. I had gone without any real sense of what I was getting into. Locals from the Danish European Mission's partner organization organized the camp with the aim of teaching the children about nutrition, hygiene and building good relationships based on biblical principles.
The children only spoke two or three words of English and I didn't speak a word of Kyrgyz, but a relationship quickly developed where they taught me Kyrgyz words and I taught them to swim; something most of them had never tried. Also, some of the children had never had a piece of fruit before, or had their own toothbrush, which they now had.
I also got to talk about Danmark and how things worked in a completely foreign country, and I even introduced them to licorice, which was a mixed blessing. It was a blessing to experience how so little can make such a big difference.
Hopefully, it has set something in motion and opened some hearts in children as well as parents. Hopefully they have seen something in the Christian and youth leaders, in the gift from a Christian organization or in the pale Dane.
