Woodworking

Just over a week ago and was thinking about ways to be able to connect better with the youth boys at camp. These guys love their basketball and they tend to play ever second that they are aloud too. Sadly I am not a very skilled basketball player (according to them), so my ways to interact with them can be pretty limited. While I was thinking I randomly spoke aloud that I would love to do a woodworking activity with them. One of the guys I work with overhead and was excited since he was thinking of doing something similar with the boys from the younger program. We quickly throw a couple plans together, sent a bunch of emails out requesting used tools and wood donations.

In only one week we were provided with the wood and a lot of tools we needed. We started the project on Tuesday afternoon, to build wooden boats together. We had previously sketched out a draft on pieces of wood so the boys simply had to saw along the lines we drew with a fret saw. We had a good group of boys interested and the first days was a lot of fun and we learned a lot to but extra rules to implicate in order to keep everyone safe!

Today was the third day in a row that the boys have worked on their boys, they are eager to start each day and rather impatient for when they can begin to very annoyed when we tell them it’s time to quit for the day.

The project has taken longer than we anticipated but we are excited to be able to continue working on their boats again next week. It has been so amazing to be able to teach these boys something they have never really seen done before. They are excited to be able to use a saw to begin with and also excited and proud to be able to be making something themselves.

It has given us time to be able to just talk with the guys as well. It takes time to saw out pieces of wood, three days so far and some of them are still not finished but it provides lots of time to be able to chat which is really big for a lot of these boys.

One moment I want to share with you happen this afternoon with a 10 year old boy. He was quickly growing frustrated with the fact that he was having trouble getting the saw into the wood and so I helped him get started but he continued to have a frown on his face until I told him to smile, he then mumbled something and I asked him to repeat it and he told me that the smile was just for me because I made him feel like smiling J