Camp One, Part One.

Our senior high campers arrived Sunday afternoon to start our Camp One week of CGM. Sunday brought adventure and texted our patience and flexibility as we learned that the bus was stuck behind a wreck on the interstate, which would ultimately make half our campers four hours late to camp. It also poured rain, which is not ideal for registration and first day of camp activities!

But we made the most of it and in spite of the trials, we had an amazing first night. We started with the traditional spaghetti dinner in the dining hall before going over into the chapel for our opening Eucharist. Bishop Don Johnson of West TN is here as our priest for the week and so he celebrated our Eucharist and preached a very meaningful sermon. We are so excited to have him here with us for the week.

After the Eucharist we did introductions and our covenant. Each camper signs the covenant, which outlines the expectations of our community.

We also met our small groups and played a few games before heading to our cabins to unpack and settle in.

Due to the craziness of Sunday night, we moved our swim test to Monday morning. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a swim test! We had blue skies and 80 degree weather.

After swim test we had our first chapel session of the week. We sang a lot of songs, then the counselors had a skit. This week we are studying the juxtaposition of faith and acts through Mary and Martha of Bethany. The counselors put on a skit where Martha was suing Mary for the malpractice of Christianity.

After the skit, the family groups went off to make their own version of the skit to bring back to the whole group.

Later we had lunch and siesta. One thing our older kids love about camp is the dedicated quiet time after lunch.

For afternoon activities one group went off campus to hike Fiery Gizzard with a group of 5th and 6th grade local kids in a junior ranger program. They walked through the trail together and the 5th/6th graders taught about various places on the trail. Then they swam in the water hole.

The on campus kids had a choice of arts and crafts or field games, then the pool or the playground. The field games played soccer:

Arts and crafts decorated nametags:

Then we went to the pool:

In camp one, going to the pool pretty much means sitting on the side of the pool. A big contrast from Pre-Camp where it was very loud and playful!

 
There was also some basketball:

Later that night we had Cabin Olympics where each cabin/side of a cabin competed in various activities. Here's the sprint race:

And the four-legged race:

Then tug of war:

Then extreme water balloon toss, where teams had to toss water balloons with two of the counselors trying to intercept them:

The frozen t-shirt relay was an exciting one - the tshirts were rolled up and frozen and the kids had to unroll them and then swim to their relay member, who put the shirt on and swam back.

There was also name that tune, where the counselors play a few seconds of a song and the teams guess what song it is.

Lastly there was a dance contest. Each cabin was given the same song (You Make My Dreams by Hall and Oats) and had to make up a dance to it. The dances were quite amusing.

After the Olympics we had capture the flag and then compline before bedtime. A great first day of camp!