KS camp 2007!

whoo! i'm just back from ks camp! im a little exhausted but i've decided to blog it down while the memory's fresh, for memories sake!
this camp has many firsts for me.
1. it was the first time i seriously tried to memorised a chapter of the bible.
2. it was the first time i trailed a jungle in the night, in total darkness.
3. it was the first time i was a group leader. (WANDERERS!)
4. it was the first time i enjoyed listening to messages and discussions from the bottom of my heart.
5. it was the first time i acted in a video, i usually HATE acting, but for the sake of my group i did it.
6. it was the first time i was an 'official' guitarist in the camp. really enjoyed it! :D
7. it was the first time i laughed especially much when im with my youth friends, bcos my great group members, all them were so funny.
8. it was the first time i caught the 'bone' in the dog and bone, i'm horrid in this game.
9. it was the first time i ate peanut butter and marshmallows together, the combi's not bad. actually, i was playing a game with the food. :)
10. it was the first time i played bridge! joanne taught me how, i'd been taught twice but never really got it, eureka!

alright let me recount the activities
day 1 - tuesday 4th dec
bernice's dad came to my house to fetch me, then reached the camp at about 10.45am. the camp site was the singapore vision farm, rather unknown but it is very near qian hu fish farm which is in chua chu kang. very ulu place, i am quite familiar with it cos it was last year's camp site too.
soon more people came in and then the camp master aka 老爷 justus started the ball rolling. briefed us on the camp rules, camp comm, the angel and mortal activity, and groupings. the theme of this camp was 'faith or fame, you decide'. my mortal was timothy tan, a guy from penang. :) there were 4 groups, namely pilgrims, strangers. wanderers and sojourners. and my group was the Wanderers which consisted of (from oldest to youngest): bak wei aka bw, jemima aka jema, matthias, noah, emelyn, annabel, me, timothy tan, song jia and benjamin yeo. however, there were only 4 of us in the group then, we had to design a flag. we did it and did it well! :) then more of our group members came. btw there was a challenge for the groups, which is to memories the whole of hebrews 11, which is 40 verses, in three days.
then we dispersed into our rooms to unpack stuff. lunch was next, we had food prepared by the church aunties! so very nice of them. lunch spanned an hour, had more than enough time to eat, so i played table tennis. i really enjoyed myself, i would say that im an intermediate. next up was singspiration, message and group discussion. the message was what faith is. it was very edifying. learnt about saving faith, dead faith and that faith is the wholehearted acceptance of a proposition or person. :) then it was discussion, i was quite nervous as i was the first time being a leader. however everything went on very smoothly and i found myself enjoying the session. we started on the memory verse, learnt 5 verses.
break time was next followed by dinner, played more ping pong. then we had an hour of endless singing. the meeting hall shook because of the strong voices and rhythmic guitar. very shiok! and then we had night walk. before that we played hide seek around the camp site. there was absolutely NO light so it was reather scary, emelyn n i hid together. we hid behind a bush and guess what, we weren't found despite 2 very narrow escapes, we were the last standers in the game and thus got the choice of whether we wanted to be the first group to go for the night trail. i was game so were my members. so went to jungle and had only some light sticks on the gound to guide us, no torches were allowed and there was absolutely no light. as the group leader, i was first in the line(we had to walk in single file). i was instructed to use the group flag to clear off spider webs, well i dunno if i cleared them though, i couldnt see a thing so i just waved my flag like some lunatic, even so, i guess that there were many thread of spider web stuck to my face after the trail but i didnt mind, it was too fun to bother. also there were some low hanging branches so i had to forewarn my group members. during the trail, there were some stations by which we had to fulfill something. one of them i remember especailly is the one that we had to scare the next group that came along that path. we screamed and screamed when they came by but failed to scare them. lol. so much for a dry throat. the purpose of this games was to make us walk by faith, not by sight. :)
when we were back to the camp site, when the lights were turned on, my eyes took a while to adjust. lights off was at 11.30, before turning in i played table tennis then went to shower.

day 2 - wednesday 5th dec
this day rained throughout!
rise and shine was at 7. had morning exercise and then had breakfast and next up was singspiration, message and discussion. this time i learnt about enoch, the first man who didn't die. he walked ith God, witnessed and went to God. one interesting fact shared by brother linus was that he was the 7th man from adam and thus God had planned that he would be translated that he should not see death, as 7 is the number of perfection and that God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. discussion again went on very well. :)
after that we had a short break then we resumed activities with a food hunt. we were to go out to buy 5 different types of food which names spell the word 'faith', and preferably from different countries. then we had to perform a skit based on the theme faith and video it down. my group did on sera giving birth to issac and abraham offering issac up to the Lord. we went to lot 1 and ate lunch there. then we shopped for the food. my group decided on french loaves, apples, instant mee, tomato ketchup and ham. we went to super market to buy them. the french loaves served the purpose of wood for the altar, the apples were a silly prop, like a trademark for my group, everyone held an apple while we did the acting. instant mee were the 'white' hair of sera because she was past age, the tomato sauce was the blood of the ram and the ham was for abraham to eat. LOL.
then we went back to the camp site to do the filming. it seemed that we were the only group which did that. bak wei was really tired, he had to shuffle from work to camp, so he rested instead. matthias was the narrator, noah was abraham, jemima was sera, emelyn was baby isaac and the donkey, annabel was the midwife, i was the ram, tim tan was the older isaac and ben yeo was the camera man. so we started the filming, laughed like crap! cos jema had to pretend that she was in labour and we were pondering of how to make the birth look natural. and a lot of things had to be taken into consideration. i had a very good time laughing my head off! btw i was the ram, i had to tie 2 really high ponytails and my hair could stand, so they loked like real horns :). then i had to cover the top of my head with cotton wool. though time was tight, we managed to finish the filming.
later on we watched the videos, i only enjoyed them a little cos of the bad sound quality. but overall i had a good time. dinner was next and the singspirtaion, message and discussion followed. learnt about moses who saw the invisible. he had faith in God, willing to renounce his priveleged status , willing to choose suffering rather than pleasure, willing to deny one's self and look beyond temporal things and willing to face the wrath of the pharoah. during discussion i learnt that there are things which we have to sacrifice in order to pursue faith. even if it is very hard to do so, it is important to do so.
following that, we went to have supper. and there was a surprise for ben yeo whose birthday fell on the day. bak wei had bought a very nice choc cake when we were at lot 1 without his knowledge. i played more ping pong then went to sleep.

day 3 - thursday 6th dec
woke up at 7 again. had morning exercise, breakfast, played ping pong, then singspiration,message, discussion. it was the last message for the camp. i found that brother linus' messages were very relevant and very good. :) this time, it was about rahab and abraham. the people from 2 extremes who passed the test of faith. abraham was a male, a noble person, materially rich, whilst rahab was a female, harlot, one who did immoral. she believed in God just because she had heard of God's sorvereignty when the red sea parted. this was how God made use of these 2 very different people and how they were capable of professing faith.
during discussion time a hot topic was discussed, was it right for rahab to lie in order to protect the spies? we came up with many answers. brother linus later explained to us that she was right because she was in a very difficult situation and it was said that God would not put us in a trial too hard for us to bear. so if lying was the only way of escape for her, she had to do it, while some youths argued that she shouldn't have lied, instead God would have protected her if she told the truth. im still divided on this. :( poor rahab.
after that, we had lunch and then indoor games. played 4 very interesting games. the first was an obstacle course by which we had to do blind folded and then we had fall back from a chair while our group members had t o receive us while we fell back midway. :) i was one of the lightest in the group so i did it, it was fun!
the next game was the dog and bone. this time we had to grab eggs. furthermore some were boiled and some were not boiled, so it would create a mess if u grabbed the wrong egg. and it the first time i grab the bone! yay congrats for me! :)
the third game was the sharleen and eunice(names of the organisers) game. it was to spread peanut butter on a the black bag a group member is wearing. then we had to throw marsh mallows on them, and then at the end of this, the no. of marsh mallows still stuck would be counted. at the end of the game, i ate some peanut butter coated marsh mallows:)
the last game was the blanket game. this was really fun. we had a huge canvas sheet dividing two groups from the other two. we had to send a no. of people and then they will have to play a game which is drawn of of lots by sharleen. some games favoured the group with less people while the other favoured the group with more people.
next up was dinner, i played more table tennis and blah blah. then it was camp fire night! we had a whale of time. it was also the night we had to recite all the verse that we had memorised as a group. we started with singspiration and then played a game which involved throwing a ball at a target after spinning 8 times. my group was second. then the strangers recited their memory verse. they did well considering that many of their members came during the later part of the camp. then we play a very funny game. it was the 冲啊 game, by which we had to come up with our attack and defence actions instead of the usual babarians, red indaians, chinese and cowboys. hahhah, my group had a very funny attack and a cute defense. attack was to move in circles and mumble huh.... as in we were wandering then we could get into postions and do a munnaeru vaalibaa! lol it was so funny! and then our defense was swinging the arms and skipping to the right then to the left and shouting wonder poko pants wonder poko pants! haha dont ask why it was related to mummy poko pants, but it was something to do with our discussion, jema said that her friends would come up with their own expletive of no meaning of one was 'mummy poko pants!' LOL! it was a very fun time! then pilgrims recited their verses, they had learnt more then the strangers. next up were the sojourners, they did relatively better and last up was my group. we did very well! though i could only memories to verse 24, matthias, jema and emelyn pushed us on to 30! :) good job people!
after which we discussed the angel mortal thing, and i was so stupid, i didn't guess that my very good friend lin yan was my angel! :( her handwritting was slightly different, guessed it got nicer since the last time i saw her hand writing. :) thanks lin yan for ur note. :)
after that, it was time to announe which group was the winner. it was my group! we tied with sojouners! we actually we placed 3rd, but thanks to our performance during campfire, we were pushed up the rungs. :)
free time till lights out at 1am. i played a little of ping pong, couldn't play much cos many people wanted to play. then i learnt bridge from joanne and i've finally gotten the hang of it! yeah! :D

day 4 - friday 7th dec
woke up at 8, very sad that camp was coming to an end but at the same time i was glad to be able to go home to rest, very exhausted! had breakfast and then devotion. played more bridge. :) and then we had camp debrief. we were given the camp souvenir, a report camp :) very funny! then we had clean up cleared the rooms. and then camp was closed. oooh how i wished the photos could come out soon! :)

dad and mom came to pick er jie and i. we went to drop er jie at west mall for her to watch enchanted with her friend. then i pestered my parents to watch also with me. then they agreed!!!!!!!!!! so i got the tickets, watch the show. it was freaking hilarious and my mom was laughing so madly. giselle is a very lovable character! i like her cheerfulness and the story was very interesting. very fairytale-ish, so much so that at the point when robert was to kiss giselle to wake her up, some very cute kid in the theatre shouted out, "how can like this one!" lol! the show is really worth watching if u want something light and happy. :)

okay i really should go, spent 2.5 hours typing this all out. it's worse than waiting for a video on youtube to load and it's finally done! okay i shall go now! :)
byebye and see ya!