Bible/Study Camp

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Man sorry guys I haven’t written in a long time! I’ve been busy and a bit lazy. I went on school camp 3 weeks ago at Galston Gorge. (I called it Gallstone Gorge) It was all of year eleven that went. There was about 35 of us all together. It was a bible/study camp. Their slogan was: "Sharing Jesus with a new generation." The only way I can describe it is that it was an interesting experience. We stayed in cabins consisting of six rooms and one main room/hallway with each room containing six guys. I was with Ben, Matt, Phil, Jake, and Josh. Within the first five minutes our doorknob came off and we had to go through the window to get out. Someone then proceeded to break the window screen trying to get it back in. The whole thing was pretty funny. We stayed up late each night talking about girls and past parties and just random stuff that guys talk about. This was really the only good part of camp, getting to know some of the kids from school better. The first night we had a welcome seminar thing and went to the cafeteria. The food at the camp was awful. Unidentifiable meat, french fries, and iceberg lettuce. Since I’m a vegetarian I lived off deep fried processed potatoes and iceberg lettuce. I felt that I was poisoning my body but I was hungry so I ate. That night we were told to grab our bibles and head off to the meeting hall. I don’t own a bible so I arrived empty handed and sat through the next hour listening to a talk on how Jesus was our savior. Later that night before bed we went to the meeting hall again and heard an inspirational story of a lady from South Africa. Her story in a nutshell was this (her story lasted wayyy longer): She had some kind of health problem and was suffering from seizures. It wasn’t epilepsy and the doctors were stumped. She wasn’t religious but her parents made her go to church with some friends one day and she prayed to Jesus. That night she woke up at 3 AM and god healed her. She saw a golden hand over her heart and hasn’t had a seizure since. It was an amusing story. But I felt that she was being used. Let me just say now that throughout this whole camp I really felt pressured. I felt that the leaders were really pushing christianity on everyone. It made me rather uncomfortable. Truthfully it was the first time that my trip felt weird. It was eerie. I really don’t know quite how to explain it. Some of the times I felt angry towards the leaders. Like at one of the seminars we had the camp leader gave a powerpoint presentation on christianity and religion. He chose four religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and christianity. He had four small captions describing each religion from an extremely biased viewpoint. He then proceeded to explain why christianity was the best religion and why it alone was the only way. He didn’t even give the other religions a chance. It was hard for me to listen and sit through the whole thing. I thought it might have just been me thinking anti-religiously that made me view it this way. After the seminar though we broke into groups and discussed the talk. I was relieved to hear that the whole group thought that the talk was very biased and was clearly designed to make christianity look the best. Throughout the four day camp we had quite a few more of these seminars. It was all pretty lame. It all just felt so wrong. We also had some activities though. There was a puzzle/group thing where we all had to work together to make it to the end of a course. That was ok, not too exciting. There was also a high ropes course. We had to climb up poles and walk across ropes. It was fun to watch people try it. Their reactions could be really funny. We also went bush walking. This was just a hike along a trail. Me and a couple of other guys led the way. We ran part of it and were way ahead of everyone. We had just finished an intense scramble down the path jumping and stumbling off boulders, when the leader yelled out that we had to turn around and go back. So we had to climb all the way back up. It was so intense! We couldn’t finish the track because a couple of girls in our group were whining and couldn't go any farther. They were really pathetic, obnoxious, total barbie doll girls. There was some girl drama among them during the duration of the camp. It wasn’t an uncommon sight to see one of them crying. One of the nights we went to a gym at the camp and played dodgeball. That was really fun. At one point though I got a ball and accidently nailed the camp leader hardcore right in the face. I felt pretty bad. His whole face was really red the rest of the night. The last night of camp was fun. After “lights out” all the guys got up grabbed pillows and mattresses and we started wailing on each other. Then one of the teachers came in to shut us up. We waited till they left and started up again. At one point someone lit a sparkler and through it on the floor. The carpet suffered some gnarly scorch marks from that. Then another teacher came in and really let us have it. Must say we deserved it. It was fun though. In the end we all went back to our rooms and just hung out, Finally the last day of camp came and we had our last seminar where we learned about heaven. They pretty much told us that if we accepted jesus and had a relationship with him we would be saved. If we didn't then we were screwed. They then gave us a survey where we could signup to receive emails on christianity and jesus. I wanted to put down Maya’s email but I didn’t. We then all hopped on a bus and went home. I was stoked to learn that I didn't miss any surf while I was gone. I then spent the next three days writing my history and english papers that were due and going surfing. We also packed because we were moving Monday to a new house. It was a very different week. A once in a lifetime experience.

Sorry no pictures

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Comments

[rinckmo]

gnarly camp
Ugly week but all is good especially when this line summarizes your main concern after the camp "I was stoked to learn that I didn't miss any surf while I was gone. " Proper attitude is everything. How is soccer?