Good morning, readers. Early early this morning, there were several booms of thunder (around 5am), there was some driving rain, and the power went out for about ten minutes. I was briefly nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to write this to you today when I woke up with a jolt as everything that was creating white noise in my room powered down, but then I remembered that a few years ago, one of the retirees weekend groups spent their whole weekend hauling buckets of water from the lake just so they could flush toilets, as they spent a bunch of time without power. Subsequently, they raised money to buy Camp a generator, and within 45 seconds of power loss, the power in the main lodge comes back to life. Apparently the generator was only needed for about ten minutes, but I must have been asleep again by the time everything was self-sustaining.
I am going to give you yesterday’s events from Bravo first, and then Aspire, because it makes the most sense.
I went into town with the Bravo kids yesterday for ice cream because they needed some extra supervision, and I got to witness a few really neat things. The first was, while ice cream is paid for by our programming costs for the kids who go into town, anything above beyond a small ice cream cone is something the kids would be responsible for themselves. Jared bought a poutine, and his Bravo peers flocked to him like a group of hungry seagulls. Charis stood looking on, declaring how gross poutine looked, and we discovered that she’d never tried it! I, for one, was shocked because it’s one of my favourite foods. Jared urged her to try it, and she repeatedly refused, until her brother Eran coerced her a bit more strongly into trying it. She made some great faces as she was chewing and swallowing her first bite of fries, gravy, and cheese curds, and once it was down and we all prodded “how was it!?” she exclaimed that it is in fact disgusting. Charis will not be ordering a poutine of her own any time soon. I regret that I wasn’t fast enough with the camera for this, but I did capture Jared being swarmed over his Canadian delicacy.
After everyone was finished their ice cream, we headed over to the locks where the three groups were given 5 more minutes to practice their Theatre Olympics from the morning, and then they would perform them on the dock by the dam, focusing on projecting their voices, because they’d need to in order to be heard over the rushing water pouring out of the dam. I stood and waited with Eran, Riley, and Nat while Eran and Riley waited for onion rings. I mentioned to Riley that he wasn’t going to have time to practice his theatre olympics, and he waved me off, informing me that it’s called improv, and he does it for pretty much anything. That would make me really nervous if I hadn’t seen what Riley’s capable of in the last couple of years. I mentioned it to Natalie, and she confirmed that indeed, Riley’s part in Beauty and the Beast is never the same twice, but we’re still looking forward to it!
On the way over, Jared took a tumble and scraped up his knee. Luckily, Lynn was there and came to his rescue, taking him back to the boat and bandaging up his knee. His group was pretty grateful to him for his tumble, because it meant that they didn’t have to perform their Theatre Olympics skit, and they didn’t feel quite ready. I was assured that they’ll be going today, though, so they can’t get out of it entirely. The two groups that did go did quite well. I heard almost everything, and I was sitting way off to the side, so I imagine that they were pretty well heard by those sitting on the dock. I also seized the opportunity of having everyone sitting in once place at one time to get a group shot of all of Bravo! The thing I love most about an artsy camp, is that when you ask them to assemble for a picture, you don’t have to pose them at all. I simply had to tell them where I wanted them so that I had the best light, and they posed themselves. By the time I’d turned my head back to them after taking pictures of the setting sun, they were ready to go. Unfortunately, as I look at the picture blown up, I realize that we’ve lost Jacob’s head while he was trying to help hoist Riley up, so I’ll have to get another shot of them all dressed up tomorrow following their performance.
Later in the evening, the Bravo kids joined the Aspire kids to have campfire, led by Aspire. Frank did a bit of teaching at the end of it, after the skits and the songs and all of the usual exuberance that goes hand-in-hand with campfires at Camp. He taught a parable called Johnny Anyone and the Prince of the Kingdom of Light, which begins by teaching the value and importance of a relationship with Jesus, and ultimately illustrates how one lives in relationship with Christ. As a result of this, a Bravo camper who’s been intently listening to Frank’s teaching all week, and asking insightful questions to boot, has given their life to Christ! We are SO excited over here, and I could just picture the angels in Heaven partying down last night. I won’t reveal more detail than that, because it’s something super exciting that this camper will want to share with their own family, but we are thrilled.
As you’ve read above, yesterday’s key task for Aspire was to lead campfire. They’ve done this in groups the past three nights, and Frank said that it was really nice to watch this group of kids learn from watching the other groups prior to them, and that campfire was a blast and it appeared that everyone had fun. The group leading campfire led everyone in a skit called the Magical Magnifying Machine, or something like that, where someone would throw something small into the machine, and something larger would be thrown back out. When it came time for an audience member to come spit into the machine though, that’s where things got funny. You’ll have to ask your kids how this went down.
Earlier in the day, I also witnessed one of Frank’s teaching sessions to the Aspire group. I’m not sure what he was teaching on, because I was being sneaky and I took the pictures through the windows of the Pine Room, but the kids look like they’re listening intently, and that’s something I always love to see.
Well, I need to wrap this up, as Aspire’s key task today is to build sandcastles using team work and effective group communication so I need to get to the beach before they’re done. Until tomorrow! While you wait, check out sunsets from a different perspective — the locks in Magnetawan!
Camp Kahquah Blog 