Camp Time

What's up everybody?
Hope everyone has had a nice Christmas and great start to the New Year. Any New Year's resolutions? Time to start hitting the gym again?

Here at Ubuntu we're starting the new year of in a big way. Last year we took the Ubuntu Academy boys to a pre-season camp that we hosted ourselves. It was great, but this year we're traveling to Worcester to attend High Africa Adventure Camp and letting the professionals do their thing. They'll take care of catering, lodging, team building activities and the overall structure to the weekend. As a coaching staff, we'll be providing the actual pre-season soccer training which will really set the bar for our standards for 2012. That means high intensity and focused training sessions.

One of the greatest parts about going to High Africa Adventure Camp too is that with them in charge of most of the details, it allows me, as well as Casey, Michael and Treswill to really invest in the boys over the weekend. I know all of us are looking forward to being away from our normal settings and just get to spend some quality time with the Ubuntu Academy boys. This is also a huge weekend to make an impact on the boys spiritually. Casey, Treswill and I met earlier today to go over the group and small group sessions we'll have this weekend. Our heart for this time away is to focus on true relationship and not religion. We're also going to be looking at prayer which I think will be good. The reason being is that there's such a culture of just going to a church in these communities that many of these 13 year old boys can be just drowned out with religion and turned away from a genuine faith. The goal is to show them that prayer can be simple and real and a part of an alive relationship with a God who loves them. We're each in charge of a devotion throughout our time at the camp (Thursday-Saturday) which I'm pretty excited about. As much trash talking and joking around with the boys that we do, it will be a nice change of pace to share some serious truth and have some deep conversations throughout the week. I hope we can passionately show the Academy boys who we love this week, that we're who we are because of our relationship with the Lord.

So needless to say, I ask that you'll be lifting up our time together with the boys this week. This is an incredible opportunity for some serious team bonding, for the gospel to be shared and to for these guys to continue to grow in maturity and wisdom as young men.

Austin