We got the games outside today. The weather held, so we took everything out to the field — and open space and a ball have a way of loosening kids up. Loosen up they did. A few of them more than I expected.

Some of the kids were restless. A little defiant, even — testing where the lines are, seeing what they could get away with. A week ago before arriving here, that had worried me a bit. Today it made me glad. Kids don’t push against people they’re afraid of. They push when they feel safe enough to. The small mischief out there was a sign of something bigger: trust is forming. They somehow realize that the adults around them aren’t going anywhere.

That’s not something we manufactured. That’s God at work — and He was at work in Strikī long before any of us got on a plane.

Our lesson today was David and Goliath. Most of these kids already know the shape of it, but it lands differently up close. What I keep coming back to is how small David was. “You are only a boy,” Saul told him. And he was. He wasn’t strong enough to beat that giant on his own, and he knew it. His hope wasn’t in his sling or his five stones. It was in God. “The battle belongs to God,” he said — and then he walked out and faced the giant anyway.

I think about the giants these kids will face long after we fly home — things far bigger than anything that happened on that field or the classroom or the crafts station or the music rotation. We can’t slay those for them, and we’re not meant to. But we can do what David did: point past our own strength to the One the battle actually belongs to. That’s the work here, and it’s God’s work first. We get to join it for a few days, alongside our Latvian partners who keep at it all year.

The restless kids out there? God is already at work in them. We just get to be present while He does it. We have our story to tell. They have theirs. In the midst of all that, the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps His people in the faith.

So tonight I’m thankful. For sunshine and grass. For kids willing to test where the lines are. 

Those of you who have prayed, thank you. Your prayers are the power that makes this happen. Those of you who have sacrificed to give financially, thank you as well. Ministry is always practical. The practical and the spiritual are never separate; they are two sides of the same coin.

This Summer our Latvia team is just under ten American Short-Term missionaries. But the rest of the Spiritual Orphans Network Summer 2026 includes 54 Missionaries. You help make this possible. These 54 or so from the United States will impact with the Hope of the Gospel. This will impact at least five hundred people when all is said and done! You are part of that. That is now part of your legacy.

Will you pray with me — that these children would learn, long after camp ends, whose the battle really is?

Blessings, Mark