How one generation loves,

the next generation learns.

This is not about that tear-jerker of a family campaign ad with the mother carrying her feverish son in the rain. But it could be.

I went to the States to see how other people were running the Royal Family Kids Camp. I’d heard that the Americans did it bigger and better, with carnivals for the birthday parties and beauty salons for the little girls. I thought it was money they had more of.

True enough, this camp I went to had a giant hand-painted castle fascade, individual birthday cakes for all 59 kids, and three stretch limos to take the kids for a drive on Everybody’s Birthday.

What I wasn’t expecting:most of the volunteers were grandparents. One of them wheeled himself around on a motorized wheelchair. Grandmothers baked the birthday cakes. One man built all the castle props. One old woman crocheted shawls for all 59 kids. She does that every year. Grandparents ran around playing with the kids, grandparents spent their whole year thinking and praying about the hurt children, and grandparents cheered and bellowed out birthday cheers.

It wasn’t that these people had more to give. But they gave much more. They came out in full force as an army of lovers.

And so even I, a privileged and loved young woman, was overwhelmed to tears every single day. How much more the foster children were.

——

The Royal Family Kids Camp is a camp for abused and neglected children. It started in California 20 years ago, and has since expanded to over 100 camps in the US, and more worldwide. It has been in Singapore for 10 years, and I have volunteered for five years so far.

Cut out its heart.

I’ll be there in June.

California, where it all began. Carol was trained there, and I’ll be trained there. It’s still surreal, to be going right into the heart of the Royal Family Kids’ Camp, when sometimes I still feel like a kid.

I’ll be directing the Singapore camp this year. There, I’ve said it. It was momentous before I decided to say yes, but since saying yes it has been a calm, logical fact, with no waves or thunder.

The reason for saying yes was Saul. King Saul. He was appointed King, but was useless to God because of his disobedience. And God turned His favor onto David. The favor of God left Saul. No matter how Saul grappled to keep his kingship, he had lost it.

I felt like Saul, once on a ministry high, now slipping into the flabby excesses of an early retirement. Everything fervent about me was gone. So I said an earnest prayer to God to be useful to Him again. Anything He gave me to do, I would do.

Then this came along. How could I say no? I’ll be directing the Singapore camp this year. Because I don’t want to be Saul. Because I was afraid there would be no camp for the children expecting it, if nobody helmed it. Those fat cheeks with tears streaming down them, asking, “Will you be here next year?” That girl who hopes to stay in her children’s home so that she’ll still be eligible for camp.

That’s the heart of it, the children. It goes back to them. I have a feeling that when God brings me to California to see the heart of RFKC there, it will still be them.

we did it together

Dear a-part-ners,

Thank you for giving to the children. And most of all for coming down to make friends to be their designated partners for the movie trip.

I think you would have come with heavy, worried hearts. You would have felt the weight of your new steps into a new world, newly discovered. It isn’t everyday that we sheltered children get to tour a children’s home.

But then you met the kids. They came up to you and were ready to answer your furtive questions, they grabbed you to be their partners, they stuck by you so easily. They loved everything you had to give them. They wanted to be friends much more than you would have imagined. And I think now you understand that with these children, you receive more than you give.

I don’t think we can bear their burdens or erase their pasts with one outing, even two or five. But we can make more good memories with them.

We’ll do it together again.

MOVIE CHANGED TO 13 MAR (SAT)

40 kids!

We go at 6 pm to mingle and make friends after dinner. Then we take the shuttle bus to GV Bishan and watch Alice in Wonderland 3D at 7 plus. Send them home after the movie. :)

Volunteers please pay for your own ticket ($13)!

SAVE THE MOVIE!

14 March 2010, Sunday afternoon. Alice in Wonderland. 20 kids. Chen Su Lan Home. (I hope Tim Burton’s imagination won’t give them nightmares!)

Volunteers will: accompany the kids on the shuttle bus and make friends, sit in-between the kids in the cinema, and have a fast food dinner with them.

Funds from all the Love Gifts here on a-part have been collected and will be used for this event! But if you as a volunteer bring a contribution that day, it will be gladly accepted.

If you have already indicated to me that you’d like to help out, I remember you. If you want to volunteer, e-mail me at angrylemons@gmail.com. I understand this comment system I have here isn’t the best and I will KILL it when I find a better one. :)

another dream?

Too soon to dream about the kids again. But there you were. First you were a fish jumping out of water that I had to save. Then you turned into a hamster I couldn’t catch. Finally you took your true form: R, the only kid I could never come close to. I ushered you onto a tour bus and we watched lights and floats. You ran amazingly fast and I couldn’t catch up, and I adored your fastness.

A very true dream; maybe to me you were always this wild little animal I could never quite grasp in my hand. You would say you liked everyone except me, and that you’d miss everyone except me. If I so much as looked at you, you’d ask why I was looking at you. When I wrote you letters, I’d be nervous as if you were someone I was trying to woo, but then I would remind myself you were a little kid needing to be loved and assured. Just a kid. But you would read my letters very quietly (I always wondered what you thought) and go on about your own business.

Finally you asked where I would be this year. “Dempsey,” I said vaguely, already flouting a security rule. I could see you draw a map in your eight-year-old mind. Do you even know what’s around your neighbourhood? “I’ll come look for you, I don’t care.” you said.

That’s more than enough for me.

I dreamt of you again.

You’re a new child, I’ve never seen you before. But you are maybe the sixth dream I’ve had about the children.

You were ruddy with hair that swept from one side of your face to another like a black cloud. I could come close to you but not touch you, or you would flit, a wild deer.

You showed me a low-res video of your childhood, your “happiest time” you said, “a childhood in San Francisco” and it was a welcome parade as the children marched into camp for the first time. It was rowdy and there were balloons and many colourful children, and peering into your happiest memory, I cried myself into waking reality.

“San Francisco.” So bizarre, pieced together from shards of the day and things I’d read. But I had the same feeling I always do when I dream of you. I need to get to you, I have to get there now.