Guest Blogger: Anders' Week at Camp

A few people have wanted to hear about Anders' week at camp, so I thought I'd let him share. It was the first time he got to go to camp for a whole week by himself. It was actually pretty easy to put him on the bus, knowing he'd have a great week, but we were all happy to have him back home. I'll be transcribing (and putting my own comments in italics). 

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Camp was awesome!!!

One of my favorite things was the blob. The blob is where there's a person at the end of a big floating thing filled with air and a person who's going to jump onto the back. And when the person jumps onto the back, the other person goes flying into the water.

The things that we did every day would be chapel. We also had a day game like whip-n-strip which is a game where every person had a sock in their pants. There were four teams and each team had a cone in a circle, and the first team to get all four cones in their circle wins. There was a tricky part where if someone pulled your sock,  you had had to stand and wave your sock until someone came to save you. (Think four-way capture the flag where you can get caught at any time--it's not as lewd as the name sounds.)

One of the really fun night games was capture the duck, which was pretty much capture the flag except that it is pretty much always girls against boys. There was a girl's duck that was a yellow rubber duck and a boy's duck which was silver with a few red feathers.

Another one of my favorite things was the red shark. You had to pay one dollar at lunch, and then they had a floaty thing that looked like a long, red shark. You could put seven people on it, and it was pulled behind a motor boat, and they tried to flip you over. (He seems to have spent most of his time on the water--it was a really hot week. He passed his swim test easily.)

Cabins were usually little brown, small house-looking things. Inside were walls made of stone and bunk beds made of wood. Luckily I got to stay in one of the new cabins that had a bathroom in it; it was a lot nicer and more comfortable.

Two of my cabin mates were from my church, so all three of us felt more comfortable. Our counselor and LIT (Leader-in-Training) were really nice and fun. I became friends with all of the people in my cabin, which was really nice. I guess that also helped make me feel more comfortable. (Covenant Pines Bible Camp shared pictures and videos on their facebook page each day. It was fun to pick out Anders in activities throughout the week. When he got home, we went through them together and he talked about all his friends from the cabin. His counselors were great. One was the college student who was working there all summer. The other was a high school student who was going through the Leader in Training program so this was his week to be an assistant counselor. Anders was very impressed with him. I got to meet him at the bus pick-up stop. An all-around great guy.)

Chapel was probably different than it sounds. Instead of just sitting there reading your Bible and singing some hymns, they had some verses of the week that they would put into songs and they had some actions. That was really fun. They also had lots of other fun songs where you got to go up into the center of the chapel and jump around doing crazy actions. That was also crazy fun.

One of my two favorite songs was a song based on the music of the Power Rangers theme song. Another was in the music of the Ghostbusters theme song. The Power Rangers song was Psalm 51:10 "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me"--he's been singing this one and doing the actions quite a bit).

During free time, sometimes I would go swimming with some of my friends. You had to have a buddy. Sometimes I would go up to the canteen and gift shop with my friends. You didn't' have to have a buddy there. Other choices were the climbing tower that has a big zip line at the top of it, the playground which might have a ga-ga ball game, or sometimes there could be a neucom game (at the volleyball courts). You could also go up to Fireside and play some board games or card games. There was the craft hall where you could buy material to make friendship bracelets or necklaces or stuff like that. You could also paint rocks, which was free. One of the rocks I painted was a s'more. I found a small square rock which I painted the tops brown and the inside white with little specks of black.

My cabin got to do something called "Outcamp" which is where sometime at night we would pack up and hop onto the trailer and have a hay ride to somewhere over in the forest. It was really fun looking at the stars. We got to make lots of s'mores (that weren't made out of rocks) and tell funny stories. Most of them were about wetting our pants as campers. We got to sleep in a big kind of house on stilts. It didn't have any beds. It was just the sleeping bags you would put down on the ground. It was still pretty comfortable. The cabins that got to go that night were cabin 21, which was us, and cabin 20.

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He's already planning on going back next year. He received several letters from different family and church friends throughout the week--I was thankful to see them in his suitcase. A few of the letters even contained some spending money. All he bought was a few snacks from the canteen and a picture of all of the campers. I believe he also gave a little to the missions project (clean water for kids in Africa), but he wished he had bought more and he wished he had bought a few things from the gift shop. It's a lesson in budgeting, calculating what things cost, and spending wisely. We honestly haven't done much work with that yet.

Unfortunately, we discovered that his shampoo, soap, toothbrush, and toothpaste were still on the bathroom counter after we dropped him off on the bus. We sent an email encouraging him to borrow some from friends and see if the gift shop had extra toothbrushes. He didn't do this, of course. So a shower was the first thing on the agenda when he came home. He did fairly well at changing his clothes--better than many of his peers at least. I washed plenty of socks and undewear, several shorts, but shirts was probably what he changed the least (there were plenty of clean ones in the suitcase). 

He said he really enjoyed the speaker in chapel, but hasn't said much about what he learned. But he had a great time, as did his friends who went with him. Thanks, Covenant Pines staff, for giving him a great week. (Also, the pictures were taken by the staff at Covenant Pines)