Camp Bethel 2011

Last weekend was our annual church youth camp.

Talk about fun times :D

As a youth leader, I had the privilege of taking a vacation day [yes!] and spending all 3 days and 2 nights at camp with the kiddos.

I was officially in charge of all the ladies - and they were awesome.

Camp Bethel is held at the youth pastor's house and surrounding property. Everyone literally camps out, and he's built showers & brings in big tents for eating and for the sessions oh & port-oh-johns of course :)

And yes, I "roughed" it right along with the kids and slept in a tent.

Not these tents though - this was the boys camp - down by the pond. The girls were on the other side of the house and up on the hill.

So, the way things work is - the first night everyone gets there - they have a session or two, some worship time, and then when it gets dark, they have a bonfire where everyone can roast hot dogs & mashmellows :)

.. and you have to literally drag everyone to bed because they just want to stay up all night :)

Going to bed was totally worth it though because we were able to wake up to this:

Wake up call is at 6am both mornings, but the girls were so excited they could barely sleep and actually got up around 4:45am? They gave me the excuse they wanted to be able to hit the showers before anyone else got up, but they just couldn't contain themselves they were so excited for the day ahead.

So, bright and early we were up.

We had a group devotional time and then I sent all the girls out to spread around the property to have personal devotions.

Breakfast wasn't until 8am - so by then everyone was super hungry :)

And also, very wound up.

As soon as breakfast was over - the day began in earnest. 

There were times of worship, teaching, games, laughing, hiking, running from bob-cats, getting eaten by mosquitoes, blood, and rain :)

And - after the very last session was over [around 10:30pm] we all headed [in the rain] down to the pond [in the pitch black darkness] to see a re-enactment of Jesus walking on water, out to the disciples [in this case 10 of them were already sleeping and only 2 were awake]

You have no idea how hard this picture was to take.

Think, pitch black - one spotlight and it's raining.

Ugh - hard - this was the only decent one I got :) If only it wasn't raining!

Oh well.

Everyone went to bed quite willingly Friday night :)

Which made the lady in charge very happy :)

Furthermore, the girls did not get up until the 6am wake-up call the next morning.

Which also made the lady in charge very happy :)

For being the middle of June we had super weird weather.

It would be hot and you'd be sweating one moment, and then the next you'd be freezing and putting a sweatshirt on [as these girlies are modeling].

We were very thankful that it didn't rain at all on Friday, except at night.

But it definitely let loose on Saturday.

Which, Saturday after breakfast is the big tug-of-war competition that everyone looks forward to.

Mostly because everyone wants to see if anyone can beat Amber - the amazing tug-of-war champion of all time - no one can beat her.

So, camp must go on - and we played tug-of-war, in the pouring down rain :) It was fun.

Overall - it was an amazing time.

It was so cool to see the kids grow, just in the short period of time we were all together - and to see the Bible really come alive to them. And to see them make decisions for Jesus. It was awesome.

And everyone definitely agrees - we already can't wait for next year!