Christmas Camp is a place where kids take off their denominational leashes and are free to worship.

Like many part of the worlds, Tanzanian Christians find it challenging to switch denominations or feel "guilt" sending their children to other churches' kid's programs as if that means they are not a faithful and loyal church member.

In the West we do the same all year and then summer comes around and VBS's pop up all around town and we see parents tip toeing into the unknown to bring their kids to someone else's VBS and what happens is magical. Community begins; you realize the lady next to you at the gym is a Christian and attends that church, your kids find friends that could last lifetimes in a one week fun program. The body of Christ becomes more real.

In Tanzania we don't have many VBS's or more commonly known as kids camps, but when they do the crowd goes wild! It is exciting and every child from a mile around wants to come. Which for some areas is several hundred children.

I know this first hand from years of playground ministry where we held only one day of events and they were attended by 40-400 kids on any giving day. There was a season when I partnered with other missionaries and Tanzanians and we literally had to shut down our ministry for a season because we could not handle the numbers that showed up. It was too much. The playground ministry is set to reopen late 2019 again and will be lead by a partner Tanzanian ministry who specialize in kid camps. More to come late 2019 on that.

This year we are starting a Christmas Camp in a new area, but different from our playground format. We will be running it with more of a VBS style. The children will come learn in smaller groups and have fun, games and do crafts. Something that Tanzanian children do not often get to do if ever.

This will happen the first two weeks of every December and set to start THIS DECEMBER 2019.

Along with the Christmas camp for primary school age children we will host youth events every evening.

To help with the camps we will sponsor 20+ interns through a application process to be a paid ministry intern from Tanzania who speak Swahili and English (High School graduates speak English and Swahili).

This is a great opportunity for volunteers from overseas come and help us be apart of teaching these kids neat crafts, games and worship fun songs.

*It has been brought to my attention to receive Christmas child boxes, we are in process of communicating with them to see how that is possible. So thank you if that is also your thinking.

Email me at omaris.tanzania@gmail.com if you would like to come.