Girls Week
By Elisa LeDesky

            This year, girls week was held at Camp Evergreen in Alberta.  For those of you who aren’t sure what girls week is about, it’s a special gathering of site 1, 2 and 3 girls for a week of fellowship and lots of girl talk.

            Girls week covered all kinds of great topics. Mandy Stobbe, our speaker, gave great lectures on “finding our identity and value in Christ” . Understanding men and “the importance of encouragement and love”. There was a question and answer period when we could ask anything to the leaders and then we wrote out questions to ask the boys, two male leaders and the speaker came to the camp to answer those questions. We also broke up into groups to do Bible studies on 4 women of the Bible – Tamar, Ruth, Mary and Bathsheba. As we looked into the lives of the women in the Bible, Mandy and Betty Greiner helped us with questions we had concerning what it means to be a Christian woman.

            All in all, it was a great week. We had fabulous hip hop dance lessons from the famous Oliver (who was from Calgary), played a few intense games of lazer tag, had fondue parties, chick-flick frenzies, and ended the week off with foot washing and prayer – which brought unity and closer relationships between the site 2 girls.

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; But a woman who fears the
Lord is to be praised.”

~ Proverbs 31:30

Guys Week
By Jonathan Friesen

            Given the approximate statistic that 50% of the world’s population is female, it’s not very often you get to spend a week exclusively with your own gender.
Outtatown has its own statistic. Site 2 has 80% of the students being female, and 20% being male. You could imagine that after spending a month with so many girls the dynamics changed completely during our full week with just us guys.

          Dinner conversations become more “extreme”, our daily activities became more “extreme”, and watching Oprah after class in our hotel room became more “extreme”

Joking aside, we were treated to some awesome, adventure-filled activities. Paint-Balling, Rock Climbing, Mountain Hiking, and Mountain Biking all in the same week - all of which being things I never dreamed of doing on Outtatown. I’m worried that I’m not emphasizing my appreciation as I should be because that aspect of guys week rocked!

           Let’s move on to other aspects of guys week. Believe it or not, it’s not always about adventure with guys. There’s a second and third dimension that I’ve neglected to mention. Those being fellowship and newfound understanding. Allow me to explain those.

            Fellowship is the simple fact that us seven Site 2 guys got to become friends with twenty other guys. All of whom were different is their own way, but shared the same passion and desire to find answers to their Christian Faith.

  We had the privilege to be taught about male issues by a guy who has spent several years of his life sculpting young men into followers of Jesus. That man is Blayne Greiner. The topics he spoke on were relationships and the common struggles a young male goes through. Topics that made a naive guy (like me) into someone substantially less naive. I’m positive that he had a very similar effect on the other guys. 

            From a week apart from the girls, there grew an appreciation for girls that I’ve never felt before. Any guy (at least on Site 2) will tell you that the half hour ride to Rocky Mountain YMCA to meet the girls was the most exciting van ride of our lives.