Dani's Discovery Tours via Photos #1: First Oasis Church Camping

(Photo Credit: Ricky Martin)

I'm interrupting my regular program of blogging to post a series called "Dani's Discovery Tours". I will design these posts to take you on a quick trip through some of my recent experiences (ha - if you call within the last month, "recent") via photos.

This first post in the series provides a glimpse into the first annual Church Camping event for our new church, Oasis, which was held on a very warm weekend in July.

That's an impressive heap 'o eggs and shells! Food is always a major part of the church camping experience. In the past, Grace Church's camping menus didn't vary a whole lot from year to year after we got into a pattern. This year the food committee wanted to try a few different meal ideas, such as a diner style breakfast on Saturday morning and a chicken bbq for Sunday lunch. Usual or unique, all the food was scrumptious!

Games and group activities are another involving and interesting part of the camping weekend. Even though it was very hot outdoors, people really got into playing Rock, Paper, Scissors in teams. Another group activity was a newspaper headlines/pictures challenge. Sometimes smaller groups of people played board games in the air-conditioned Stonehouse.

And, of course, the water balloon toss is an annual tradition that we could not miss. This activity starts out quite structured with rules about when to toss the balloon to your partner and how to take a step back every time you throw it and such, but as things progress, the water balloon toss becomes a free-for-all full-out dash and blast accompanied by lots of noise and water.

I already referred to the Stonehouse part of the campground at Hidden Acres, to which we could retreat for air-conditioning when we needed to cool off. It was also a wonderful shelter to escape to when a rain-and-wind storm blew in rather suddenly on Saturday evening. We moved our campfire sing and share time indoors, too. During the informal devotional time, one of  men revived an abandoned tradition by teaching us the music and motions to the children's song, "With Jesus in my Boat, I Can Smile at the Storm". 

For me, the church service on Sunday morning is always a special and meaningful time during the camping weekend. The outdoor pavilion we were in this year had such good acoustics and we had some very lively congregational singing. I just loved it! On Camping Sunday our pastor typically has a practical message about the church; this time he spoke about the pilgrimage of Oasis thus far.

Since we are a young church, (I realize Oasis hasn't been going very long yet, but here I mean we have lots of littles) much of church camping involved children in one way or another. 

By Sunday afternoon, the little people showed us just how much energy they had put into the weekend when their exhaustion-induced meltdowns began cropping up. Even in that, the children gave us an object lesson of sorts. Like one of my friends said, when we adults have our "issues", often we need someone in our church family to acknowledge that we're tired, to encourage us to be the mature and responsible people we are - even if we don't feel that way at the moment, and to gently steer us toward Home.