Summer Wrap-Up: Alpha
Alyssa LaRocque
It's always a pleasure to welcome in the young adults to Alpha as our closing week of the summer. Many served as staff during the summer and now get the chance to relax and enjoy camp as a camper! Steve and Becky Lambert and Emily Shields brought in a week full of fun and purposefulness, and you can read below for a few highlights!
Favourite Moments: The office where I work is connected to one of the spaces where campers and staff would have their "Team Time" to discuss questions based off of the lessons. This year, the team times broke the ice each day with a Mad Lib game, where everyone is asked to supply a random list of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., and then these words are plugged into a pre-written story. The results are ridiculous, and the booming peals of laughter that erupted from the group made me smile every day! It was all the more sweet knowing that the bonds created over laughter were only strengthened each day as each group moved into important discussions about faith.
Silliest Moments: One of the afternoon water games involved teams of 3 or 4 campers going out in canoes with a few balloons taped to the side. The goal was to try to pop other teams' balloons, and the last canoe with an inflated balloon would be declared the winner. However, the game quickly devolved into a "tip the canoe" frenzy that brought out everyone's inner Viking. It was hilarious to watch rampaging swimmers and boats locked in mortal combat to keep afloat! Thankfully everyone made it back to shore in one piece!
Meaningful Moment: Alpha has a long tradition of "Alpha Projects", where campers have the opportunity to contribute to camp as a team in an area of their interest. This year's Music Project group used violin, flute, guitar, bass, cajon, piano and voice to lead everyone in thoughtfully chosen songs. Having that many talented musicians playing that many different instruments was a real treat, and helped to create a meaningful spirit of worship.
The Weather Report: The theme for the lessons was prayer, and some prayers were powerfully answered when it came to this week's weather! The forecast had predicted thunderstorms every day from Saturday to Wednesday, and so the outlook had been bleak (literally!). However, God amazed us by driving away most of those stormy predictions; we had clear and sunny weather so many times when rain had been anticipated. Wet weather did still occur, including a crack of thunder that woke even the deepest sleeper up one night, but we still praise God for His generosity in the week's weather.
Wrapping up Alpha also means wrapping up the whole summer! We praise God for all His faithfulness and grace towards camp in 2018, and we as the Beacon team want to say a big thank you to all who were present. You were meant to be here, and God will continue His work in you!