Saturday, August 8, 2009

Teen Camp!

Well camp has come to a finish. It's sad around here without all of the kids and staff... it's too quiet.

Camp was good - we had 23 teens come from as far away as Cape Breton and as close as Oromocto. We didn't have any conflicts among the kids which was a blessing. Pastor Josh Cameron came as guest speaker for the week, he did an excellent job of presenting the gospel as a life change and not simply a single prayer. He presented in a clear and comprehensive way the need of a choice to follow Christ and accept His gift of salvation, not only for salvation in death, but in life.

The camp program ran differently this week and provided some opportunities not only for campers to have a good experience, but for staff to spend time with the campers in a more practical way. The challenges that we ran throughout the week were all based on a 'Survivor' theme, we had three teams of teens and ran two challenges each day. The challenges were fun, and kept everyone good and tired. One game we played later in the week was called Underground church, which is basically just an advanced version of hide and go seek... a lesson that I've learned this summer is that I'm perhaps ... a tiny bit ... accident prone. While playing Underground church I was to chase and tag staff and campers ... I was chasing Manuel, one of our counsellors, at full tilt... he hit the beach and made a sharp left turn... I did not... I went for a swim in about 3 inches of water... the limp is going away now... sort of ... haha.

We had planned an overnight canoe trip, however it fell out of our hands a bit. Kevin, Lisa and I took a boat trip to the island that was to be the destination for the girls canoe trip ... we discovered that it'd ... uh ... sunk! The way things progressed it worked out that the weather wasn't suitable for a canoe trip for the guys either. Kevin made some quick changes and we got some tents at Wal Mart. We ran a challenge in the afternoon for the campers to compete in putting up the new tents, then they spent the night in them. The girls down by the lodge and the guys up in the woods across the road. Ben Lawson spent two nights in tents with the guys and had a great opportunity to spend quality time with them. That night, Josh gave his devotions twice, once up in the woods and once for the girls.

On Tuesday and Wednesday night, a group of Christian young men came and ministered in music. Their band is called from the Deep and they made quite a sacrifice to come and share for two nights. The first night they played acoustic music for the campers and staff, the second night electric. Josh, the lead gave a gospel message during the set. It was great to have them and we certainly appreciated their hard work and ministry.

The campers that came from Cape Breton left with Lori on the bus early Friday and Lori will now be preparing for 2 weeks of camp in Cape Breton. Ben and I will be heading out tomorrow for Nova Scotia, I am very much looking forward to returning home to Liz. She has been working hard back at home and I have really missed her!

Kevin Strout, Joshua Cameron, George Scott, Ben Lawson and myself. It was great to work with some old friends from Bible School!

The Campfire Challenge!

The winning team of the tent putter-uppering challenge.

Campers and staff.

We're going down.

This was not oil paint... this week.

A huge thank-you to our friends at Gorrie, especially Jamie for making this happen. The new canoe rack for the truck looks fantastic!

No comments: