From the 7th to the 14th of July 2012, 61 people gathered at Raiskums special boarding school to participate in a camp for people with mobile disabilites. Half of these people had mobile disabilities and the other half were there to help them to overcome this.
We started with a night of introductions and a game where people had to burn a match and tell something about themselves before the match burnt out. For some participants it was the first challenge, because they had never lit a match before. During the evening we split up into teams and tried to answer very challenging and entertaining quiz questions.
On Sunday morning we had a church service with a pastor and worship 
team from Riga’s Morning Star church. Sunday evening we spent listening to the Riga Gospel choir who came to Raiskums to perform for us. This was a highlight for many of the camp’s participants.
During the week we had lectures that challenged us to give our life 100% to God and to be part of His plan for us. We had the opportunity to discuss in groups what God’s plan in our lives is and how we can fulfill this. We began every day with morning exercises to wake up our body, which was followed up with a short devotion and prayer for the day to open up our spiritual eyes. We had great worship times lead by Raili. Raili is Finish and was born blind, but this did not prevent her from leading worship in Latvian. We had many opportunities to come forward and let guests and camp staff to pray for us. All of this was very challenging for our spiritual minds.
Our physical body got challenged by taking part in orientation in Raiskums and around the school, taking part in sport and games, going for walks, sitting full day in a wheelchair and for some of us even swimming in the nearby lake. Everybody was able to get time to meet with physiotherapists and receive massages and/or personal exercises to continue therapy at home.
One evening we watched a challenging movie called Evan Almighty, which challenged us to think about how God is using us to fulfill His plan. We also had the opportunity to peek into a communist Asian country and to see and hear how people live there and how hard their life is. It challenged us to pray for people we do not know and to pray to change the world.
Our creativity got challenged during the workshop times. We made and decorated vases in one and learnt that everyone can be an actor in another. We saw that everyday life can be theatre and a wheelchair is not a hindrance to being part of the acting.
We had the chance to leave camp more beautiful than we came and let our nails be painted and our hair be trimmed. It is usually really challenging for us to visit a hairdresser or to get a manicure and so many of us took this opportunity to change our outside look.
During our free times many of us gathered together to play mind challenging table games – scrabble, monopoly, chess, checkers, facts game etc.
Every year one day in camp is called “Extreme day” when we are able to be part of something really challenging. In past camps, we have been flying with ropes at heights of 20m, rafting, driving with Quattro cycle etc. This year we went to Latvia’s biggest horse stable. We saw how horses are trained, where 
they live and what accessories are used to make them beautiful. All of us had the possibility to stroke and feed the horses and a really cute pony. Many of us were able to ride the horse or pony, because strong men lifted us up to the horse and held us there. For everybody else who couldn’t or didn’t want to ride the horses, a horse carriage was offered and we had long rides in the beautiful Burtnieki area. We finished up this day with a camp fire and picnic and were sharing testimonies and poems in the fresh evening air. This day was a highlight for all of us.
We finished up the camp with feedback to help next year’s camp to be even better. Later we were able to share our highlights with everybody. Even the people who have speech problems and are usually shy, spoke up during this time.
It was really great to get out of my home, to be in Christian fellowship, to meet friends and to make new friends. Overall it was great to be part of seeing how two people changed during the camp and asked Jesus to come into their life – one was a 
participant and the other an assistant.
Thank God, the organizers and the sponsors for the camp. Thanks also for all the personal assistants who had to overcome their fear of the unknown and learn to do something totally new for most of them and help us to enjoy the camp 100%.
“Challenge 5” is history; “Challenge 6” is still to come. We hope that the end of the camp was the beginning of a new and wider world for all of us.
Blessings,
Wings for Wheels
YWAM Riga
More photos you can find here