Calvary Chapel's High School Summer Retreat.

*Warning. This blog contains lots and lots of photos.

It's taken me long enough, but finally, my blog about the high school summer retreat I helped out at.

Calvary Chapel West Grove is my church, and this year, I got the pleasure of being able to help out at the high school summer retreat. I've helped out with Jr. High before and it was a lot of fun, so I was totally stoaked when Pastor Eric asked for me to come up.

The whole week was totally awesome: the kids were great, helping out was a lot of fun, and hanging out in general was a blast.

A couple kids came to the Lord that week, which was amazing. And at the end of the week, they were baptized at the beach. The Lord is good.

On the last night there we had an afterglow, and it was just amazing to see all the kids there, worshiping and praising the Lord, praying for other people, people they didn't even know. At one point in the night almost every single one of the kids had stood up, and it was a beautiful thing to see.

GAMES

They do this thing that they call Color Wars. They have different games every day, and the kids play against each other, Red against Blue. Some of the games are freakin insane and the kids can get crazy sometimes:

Egg Toss

Bobbing for....ONIONS. With some eggs.

The Obstacle Course

The best one of all:

Dodgeball!

Or as we liked to call it that week: "Doggy Ball"

Leaders vs. Blue Team boys

Feed your Neighbor

The games were really fun to watch. Some of the kids get crazy. Red team ended up winning by 2 points!

Here are some other fun pictures from the week.

Slicing and Dicing

59 eggs for breakfast for the leaders

We got crazy

One of the last things the teams had to do was put on a skit, whoever won got more points. What they ended up doing was combing the Red Team and the Blue Team, everyone [who didn't know] was shocked....because they couldn't have a specific "winner", it resulted in a dance off.

PRANKS

All the high schoolers had to be in their tents about 11:00 each night. Us, being leaders, got to stay up as late as we wanted. Well every year there is a break out of pranks that go on, this year this is what we decided to do:

There is the place where everyone has their chairs set where everyone meets before meals and also to listen to the main study. Well, one night, us "young adults" decided to gather everyones chairs, put them in the middle of the gathering area, and saran wrap and duct tape them all together. It was amazing.

Another one of the pranks we did, or helped out with, was duct taping a kid to some poles. He has always given one of the older leaders a hard time, and says he looks like Joe Biden[which he does I must have to say], so he wanted to get him back. I have pictures but for some reason I'm having trouble upload them, you can look at those pictures and also the other pictures from the whole camp HERE. There are two albums: Summer Retreat 2009 and Summer Retreat 2009(2). If you're really looking for the pranks, its in the second one.

Well, another one of the pranks we were planning on doing was in the middle of the night go and unhook some of the tents, so they collapse. Yes it may sound mean but, we would mainly be doing it to the kids we knew. Anyway, we didn't get around to doing it so on one of the last nights, Marissa's(a friend of mine and also a leader) little brother decided to pull that prank on us girls. at 6:30 in the morning. When we had gone to bed just 3 hours before. It was wonderful, really. So, the next day, Frankie decides to get revenge for us girls. (thank you boyfriend) There was leftover fish that had been laying out all night, so what does he decide to do? Rub it all in his face. watch the video and enjoy:

Overall, the camp was just absolutely amazing. I had so much fun. And it wasn't even just having fun with the friends that were helping out with you, it was also serving the kids there, because that's what you're there to do, is serve them. I was really glad to be there, and I can't wait to go back and help out again next summer.