[Post migrated from LiveJournal]

Camp has come and gone, but the spirit remains.

Friday

Slept in… had a nice relaxing breakfast of eggs on toast YUM!
Mid-morning – helped my Dad with the lawn mower. As it eventuated, we didn’t need to take it to the shop for servicing – it worked!
Tried out a new game I had been given – Age of Empires III! I remember playing the demo last year – the game is cool. I love the story-campaign game… the American New World setting…

Lunchtime was spent at the Glen. A normal kind of lunch…

After lunch I quickly packed my stuff up, grabbed the spare double-bed doona and headed off. Time: 2:30pm

Stop #1: Church

At church, ran into one youth kid, Ps Ken and then TP and his friend JP. TP was collecting music equipment to bring to camp, so I helped out with the communion trays and cups.
Time left church: 2:40pm

Stop #2: Coles Express

With the petrol indicator at just over half-tank, I stopped by my normal Coles Express where I used up my very last 8-cent voucher. Petrol was a reasonable $1.19… (from memory)
Time left Coles Express: 2:50pm

The journey down to camp was very pleasant; the dual-carriageway provided a good run.
At around 3:45pm, the rain started pouring… by which time I had travelled ~85km out of the ~100km to camp/Philip Island.
Time arrived at camp: 4:05pm – total travel time = 1.15hr

Camp

Friday setting up was ok; shame about the weather. With the cold wind outside, one of the most memorable catch-phrases for the evening was “shut the door!” by ST…
One interesting observation was that the campsite was shared with two other groups – one being the Indonesian Praise Church and the other a Greek Coptic Church. Our part of the camp was in the middle, between the two groups. During the registration time, we did have a periodic individuals turning up to register from next door…

Friday night

Opening talk was really exciting – we had an altar call, which, while unconventional, meant that for the 5-6 people who did respond, their whole camp experience would now be totally phenomenal!

After the main program, we (FOCUS group) started off my meeting up to play card games… 500, poker… and then there was this massive island-wide blackout…
We attempted to play in the dark using torch lights… but eventually gave up… for a while, we went outside and star-gazed… because of the total black-out, the view was amazing! The clarity of the night sky, with all the constellations on show… After a while, we went back into the Meeting Room (where we had earlier played cards) to plan how best to surprise DH as it was now into the early hours of his 22nd birthday. It was this main activity which kept is going until 3:00am-ish…

Saturday

Got up with the sunrise (as always!) at close to 6:00… I eventually got up and readied myself for the 7am prayer… surprisingly not too tired… prayer wasn’t too eventful… AT’s voice was clearly not awake yet, as he led the prayer worship… =P. As is a tradition of mine, the first breakfast of camp meant that I ate a bowl of mixed cereal followed by toast with Vegemite! MMmm! (Fact: when I was a kid – I didn’t like Vegemite… for the last 5 years of camping – I have grown to love it!) Worship & the morning talk was again great, a good continuation from the night before. Just before lunch, just before saying grace, we presented DH with his LIGHTSABER!!!! I captured the present unwrapping on camera/film! Lunch consisted of a meat/salad wrap. We all had to serve someone else, which resulted in much hilarity with multiple people wanting to serve certain popular individuals! 😉

The afternoon program began with a 2-hour tribal war! 12 tribes representing the 12 tribes of Israel. I was in Gad, where I got to know some of the IS and Youth guys. TP and AR from Surge was also in our group, but then AR got sick =( Our tribe’s first activity was the tribal dance planning – we ended up using the Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way” turning it into “We Want It Gad/God’s Way”.

Second activity was Captains Ball – somewhat like netball (can’t run with ball) but instead of hoop/goals one individual stands on a chair with a 1m radius no-go zone surrounding them. I really got into that activity… ended up with a poked eye… but it was minor. We lost in the end by 1 point!

Third activity was crate-stacking. Tribe Gad managed 12 vs 14… I had the first attempt of my team – managing 6. Challenges I faced were that I kept getting my pants stuck in the crates and the wobble of the crate stack meant that at the sixth – the whole structure tumbled. On the plus side, I probably had a really fast stacking rate… =P

Fourth activity was carpet bowls. We won this activity – but I was thoroughly confused by the balls as they kept rolling the wrong way – according to what the proper lawn bowls balls should do (the small circle bias normally is on the side/direction that the ball will roll towards, but instead the opposite happened)

Final activity was rock climbing. Two walls – one easier worth 6 points, the harder one worth 10 points, partial completion worth half points. I made an attempt on the hard wall, only to get 3/4 of the way up when, due to tiredness, I leaped/stretched and missed the next hand-grip… All in all, the tribal war was really fun and enjoyable.

At 4pm, free-time started. A few of us hung out at the giant swing… I captured some guys on film… some footage is good is giving viewers an appreciation of how big the swing is.
At 6:30pm, Tribe Gad met up for a final practice of our tribal dance/performance… After dinner, this final competition of the tribal war commenced. All tribes performed amazingly, with humour a constant vibe… In the end, Gad came 5th… with the top 3 Tribes all within a point of each other. The prize was an offsite breakfast on Sunday.

Saturday night dinner was a roast beef. The evening talk was very powerful and I found it particularly relevant to where I was at the time. A midnight curfew was established due to the disturbance that eventuated from the night before… confined to our rooms, some of the guys played cards in the back room, while JC & I (us responsible drivers) slept in the front room… I probably ended up sleeping around 2:30am…

Sunday

Slept in and joined the prayer mid-way thru (7:30am-ish). Helped out with communion. Unfortunately when I brought the trays down, I had overlooked the container used to fill individual cups… so we had to spend more time filling the cups using jugs instead… lunchtime was relaxing, ppl just hanging out, talking… the medical students/doctors/nurses/physios give really good massages… mmm…

Packing up was quite good – my final duties as a member of the committee was to inspect the rooms to ensure no-one had forgotten anything. It began to rain quite a bit, so ppl were scurrying back and forth from cars, cabins and the dining room. For the journey home, I gave DH a lift, before dropping off stuff at church. By the time I got home it was 4pm-ish. Dinner that evening was a family dinner at the local NRG restaurant… life back at home… ahh…

[This single post has been a long time coming… =oP]