Last few weeks were weeks of camps, along with my 2 weeks of non-pds-work: guard, guard off, church camp, guard guard off, jordanites camp, guard guard off, teenedge camp. shiok. but tiring too. and it’s not very good deal to do guard especially when one is the senior ‘squadron orderly sergeant’.
church camp at malacca was pretty good. to me, it was more of a good bonding time between members of the church, a chance for us to know one another better. I thought I’d be quite lonely in the camp considering that a lot of the youths are not going, but it turned out pretty good. I shared room with jonathan sim, and on the bus, they put all the youths together…jinny, xiuhui, ben, jared, shermaine, kaiyin and clarence. Throughout the camp, I managed to talk more with the teens, especially ben, jerald, daniel, clarence, bernice, jessica, deborah and also shermaine (or sher-main-ne) and the rest. it was great that there were two free-and-easy sessions in which we all went out together as a group, went shopping at mahkorta, jonkers street, eating, exploring etc. we also had fun at nights, with playing card games, watching TV together. my room became The gathering room for everyone in which it was the centre of activity. lol. the 3rd night they actually stayed up till 4+am, though I was sound asleep already.
although the teaching sessions won’t that impactful cos mostly I was either playing piano or doing multimedia, the buddy-buddy prayer system after each session were quite helpful. the sunday service was pretty unique too, with a post-breakfast setting and a giant communion bread. all-in-all, it was an interesting experience for my first church camp.
—-
jordanites camp was, too, a great bonding time for everyone. although the group was small for a camp, the group was small enough for everyone to be comfortable and cosy. however, due to the small size of the 2 east coast chalets, it was still quite squeezy and hot hot. the first game was the amazing race, in which we raced the other team to the camp site. it was fun and interesting, cos it was a photo hunt, and hence they also saved manpower cos there’s no need for station masters. but the clues were pretty vague and lame. we went to little india, vivocity, and bedok, and finally to east coast island resort.
the workshops and sessions were great, we got to know more about mentoring and jordanites’ vision and stuff. the games were fun, especially the candlelight soccer which I’ve never played before. The wet games, were urm, wet. tho we didn’t really go all-out in water bombs as the teenedge camp did. we also had some free time which we cycled around east coast.
I did not attend the BBQ night as I bought tickets for planetshakers at expo. went with joel low and jonathan sim. the first hour was great high and loud praise and worship. then preaching by ps. prince from new cre. the thing is, after that, it seemed more like their own church service, promoting their own youth ministry and their own songs. planet shakers didn’t come back. quite a disappointment.
—-
teenedge camp…I only went for the second day evening, as I was too tired from the guard. I also didn’t want to get wet and dirty in their games. haha. I went to the chalet at changi, and they were all splashed with colourful paint. luckily I came late and they finished their games already. the dinner and dance was great, with the party-like environment. most of the people got into the groove and started dancing to the music. it’s an interesting and new thing, with loud club-dance-like music and all. i guess everyone had fun. we even had makeshift spotlights from ben’s car, and from the projector, I managed to project wmp visualisations on the floor. haha.
that’s all for now.