Saturday, September 1, 2007

JV Kids camp!

On the 22nd of August, I woke up at 5 AM, got all of my stuff together and drove down to Frydlant with my family where our JVK bus was ready to be loaded. We all said our good-bye's to our parents and drove off. On the bus we had music, books, games and best of all, great friends. About 2/3 of the way in, we stopped in Ljubljana to pick up everyone from Slovenia. After around 5 more hours, we arrived at the place we were staying at 12:30 AM or so. Tired and sleepy, we all scrambled into our cabins and went to bed.

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of the breakfast bell. I got dressed and headed down to the teaching area to have a quick Bible reading with all of the other JV kids. Once that was done, we had American cereal for breakfast! I had Lucky Charms - Yummy!!

After breakfast Becca had a really cool surprise for us. Every year we get one thing to remind us of camp, kind of like a "souvenir". We all came over and Becca said that this year we were getting towels. I looked over at the dining area and spread all across the tables were colorful towels from stripy to swirly to pictures of surf boards, anything you can think of. I was so excited to pick out my own towel! I picked a green and pink one with all sorts of swirls and little pictures. I love it! These towels were given to us by various friends of JV, including my "Aunt M." and Mr. and Mrs. "AG"...THANK YOU!!

I love our group, Akiko. I loved it especially this year because we had Nate and Anna as our counselors. We also did way more things as a whole group not just Akiko boys separate and Akiko girls separate. We had Bible reading in the mornng together which was really cool because we could help each other and learn as a whole group.

This year at JV Kid's Camp we learned about prayer. I think it really helped me and I learned a lot. As always, Queen Blue (Mrs. Pitcher) taught us. One thing I really liked doing was a craft we did. We made prayer beads that remind us to pray either for a certain thing or just for anything. I made beads to remind me to pray for one girl in my class that has some problems in her life. I prayed that God would forgive her and that she would notice his presence.

I really felt God's presence at camp this year, I also really felt connected to the theme. I had never really learned about prayer so most of the things Queen Blue said were new to me. It's hard to express in words what I felt because it was just so amazing.
Also, I really enjoyed the place we stayed at this year. Right by the beach, beautiful weather and instead of tents (Thank you Becca!) we stayed in cabins.

If you look at this picture, you will see two cabins. The one to the right was ours. It's so cool to look at it now and remember all of the great times we had there.

It's so fun being a JV Kid!

4 comments:

Michelle Watson said...

Hi Claire...

I love seeing your pictures and reading your blog. It sounds like JV camp was a perfect blend of fun, friends, beauty, new truths, teaching, crafts, food (yay, Lucky Charms!) and great weather. I'm so happy for you and love that you love the towels.

Love you tons, "Aunt M"

Unknown said...

Wonderful update Claire!! You wrote it so well that it almost felt like I was there! Fun pictures too - look forward to seeing more of them one of these days!

Love you, Mom

Mike France said...

Hi Claire,

I'm so glad you got to sleep inside, so you didn't have to worry about the bears all night long. I remember camp when I was young and we always lost a few kids every year to the bears! It was a risk worth taking for all of the fun we had at camp.

Looks like you had a great time with your group of friends. I'm glad you found prayer to be something to look forward to as being a great part of your life. It will lead you to great comfort knowing you can talk to God whenever you want and about whatever you need to.

Looking forward to seeing you in a few months. Lets go to a concert together.

Uncle Mike

nate hughes said...

gosh, i'm so glad that i got to be a part of JVK camp this year...I can't wait for 2008!!!!