This summer, one of our incredible summer staff is taking over the Beacon Blog! Emma “Brio” Deinum will be bringing you highlights of our summer 2020 program, Beacon Unlimited. Here’s a recap about Week 3: Survivor.

Week 3 came and conquered. So many campers, so many fun activities and best of all, an awesome theme. Survivor week was so much fun, from cabin times to electives, there was a lot going on this past week.

There were some fun electives like Survival 101, where campers learned to tie knots and important facts on how to survive in the wilderness. They even made a super cool paracord bracelet! Continuing with the survivor theme, there was Survivor Mafia, but the game had a bit of a twist. The Mafia would send someone off the island during the night and there were some pretty cool roles made up. There was the Teleporter, who could choose someone to bring back to the island and someone called the Duct Taper, who could choose one person and “duct tape” their mouth during the night, and that person wouldn’t be able to speak during the next round. Riff, who was running the elective, said “Everyone loved it and the campers always left with a smile on their faces.”

In Pictionary Party, campers and leaders had a lot of fun using an online Pictionary program called Skribblio making pictures. Von Baron and Shimmer were impressed with all the drawings! Another creative elective was Journal Making, where campers got to make their own journals. Along with the Survivor theme, in Minecraft Meets Beacon Part 2, campers used the Survivor mode to play with each other throughout the week. They completed tasks like gathering resources and building shelters, and eventually tried to beat the game. There was also a coding elective, where Logic had a few things to say: “We had so much fun this week learning about the ways people create games and fun computer programs using code! During the week we covered topics such as loops and functions but always did it in a way that made a game. As we worked on finding errors in code, we learned the importance of persistence even when things look hopeless. That same skill can be used in everyday life as Christians.”

Cabin Time this week was filled with Survivor challenges every day, and on the last day some cabins and campers created their own challenge, and ended up doing a Beacon spoon-on-the-nose competition! Leaders said it was just like at camp! Dash mentioned that in her Cabin Time that they had great discussions about how the fact that God is both perfectly strict on sin and perfectly kind and loves (aka just and compassionate) and what makes Him the Judge like no other… . a really great paradox! Campers were also very excited about the characters from Survivor: Beacon Edition, which they got to watch an episode everyday in cabin times. You can check out the videos on the Beacon Youtube channel, along with memory verse video aids for each week! [Editor’s Note: We’ve embedded the YouTube playlist below for you!

And exciting times for Wilderness, Basecamp and Cornerstone! There was the first of three panels that took place this past Thursday, where the directors of these camps discussed the title of the panel, Tough Questions for 2020. I got a chance to be a camper during this call and I really enjoyed the conversation about the tough questions and things going on in the world right now - it was a very helpful panel.

So here we are, entering the end of July with Week 4. Time goes by so fast! I’m looking forward to next week’s theme of Maker Space and all the fun crafts that will be made, and there’s also some pretty cool elective choices that summer staff are running along with some amazing volunteers. A fun update from the summer staff team: we finally had a non-work related zoom call hangout where we just chatted about our favourite camp memories and got to know each other a bit more. And along with zoom calls, taking funny pictures is always a requirement.

Until next time,
Brio :)