Juniormentary Camp — Soaring for Christ

Joey and the slideshow team created this video for Day 5 of Bible Camp.

There's a lot to say about camp this year at Kokrine Hills. And there are too many stories to tell. This year was very unique. It was the first year Soaring for Christ sponsored kids. It was the first year that a Camp was cancelled due to rain. And it was the first year that Junior High and Elementary Camp were combined into one ginormous camp. Let me tell you about it...

Highlights

Bad weather caused Junior High Camp to be canceled. So the next week Kokrine had Juniormentary Camp — a combination of Junior High and Elementary Camp.
Soaring for Christ helped sponsor fifty kids this year!
The campers had a blast, asked great questions, and grew in their knowledge of Christ.

Before the rain

Camp at Kokrine can be divided into two seasons: before the rain, and after the rain. The first camp, High School Camp, was before the rain. It was extremely hot. I remember melting outside while playing basketball. And when I got home, I told my friends who complained about the heat in Big Lake that they hadn't felt anything yet.

The next camp, Discipleship Camp, was very similar. The High Schoolers who stayed for Discipleship Camp got to enjoy more sunshine and warm days at the sand bar. But it wouldn't last for long.

After the rain

After Discipleship Camp, and right as Junior High Camp was supposed to begin, heavy clouds drifted across the interior of Alaska from the Bering Sea. This mysterious weather system covered the entire central part of Alaska, and sat still for a whole week, dumping water.

Since it was raining almost constantly with low clouds and unpredictable winds, the pilots were not able to fly for all of what was supposed to be Junior High Camp. The rain carved deep gullies in the dirt runway and these mini canyons continually needed to be filled. When one pilot did a test flight to see if it was ok to fly, he came back white like a ghost and said, "We are not flying kids in this."

So, they ended up having a sort of staff camp at Kokrine that week...

The bad weather was so widespread, that a High School Camp at Kako had very few students because they couldn't fly them in. Kako is more than three hundred miles away!

*This photo is of low clouds floating over the runway after Discipleship Camp.*

A combined camp

But, despite the challenges, God had a plan. Due to the bad weather, a new kind of camp was born. I call it: Juniormentary Camp.

That's maybe not the best name... It's kind of cheesy. I asked Lael what she thought, and she was disapproving. There's actually no real consensus on what it should be called. I've heard it called "Junior Elementary Camp" or even "Elementary High Camp." Usually people just say, "Junior High / Elementary Camp," but that's just boring.

Joey, the camp director, decided that all of the junior high kids should come for the week of elementary camp since they had already committed. And that the few Elementary kids who had filled out the application form should also come.

All in all, the pilots flew in sixty-two campers. Fifty Junior High kids, and twelve Elementary kids. This extra-large camp happened, in part, because of those of you who decided to sponsor a camper. Around forty kids were sponsored at Juniormentary Camp, and some of them might not have come otherwise. With your help, Soaring for Christ assisted fifty campers by paying to twenty-five to one hundred percent of the camp fee.

The Laboy's

One special thing at camp this year was the presence of our friends, the Laboy's. We've known the Laboy's from when we lived in Ohio. Their trip up to Alaska had been in the works for more than a year when we visited them in Georgia.

When they arrived in Alaska, we were able to spend some time with them and explore a little bit of Alaska. Alejandro—Daniel and Marisol's son—was blown away by the mountains, the lakes, and flying in small airplanes. And Daniela, their daughter, made a special connection with one of our younger chickens named Lemon.

After a few days with them, we flew them out to camp. They did an excellent job handling the killer mosquitos, basic housing (it's called a camp for a reason!), and wilderness environment. And each of them was well loved by the other staff at camp.

Lael and Daniela as counselors

Lael and Daniela teamed up with Katie to be counselors in Cabin 4. Most of their girls were Elementary age. And one girl Lael had met last year: Bonnie. Their cabin name was "Los Burritos Locos," which means "The Crazy Burritos" in English. And their cabin was certainly crazy.

One girl named Adrian caught a squirrel with her bare hands. The squirrel, of course, bit Adrian so it could escape. And the camp doctor, Isaiah, was simply amazed that he had to deal with such a strange injury.

Just so everything is clear, Alejandro and I, as cabin inspectors, did not give our sisters any special privileges. The job of the cabin inspectors is to go to each cabin and create a review of its cleanliness. We judged each cabin will equal scrutiny. And Cabin 4 was examined especially carefully.

Bible Camp!!!

Once camp was in full swing, it went so smoothly. We had like... the best team in the world — not to brag or anything. Most of the counselors and staff were the same as last year. It was wonderful being able to rekindle the relationships we had made and to meet a few more people.

Every morning, all of the counselors would give cabin reports on how the night went. Many of the stories they shared were very encouraging. For example, a few of the counselors said that they had deep, late-night conversations with some of the "trouble" kids. You know that kid who always seems to be in a riff with the other kids? Anyway, the counselors said these kids were asking some really important questions about Jesus and how they could be saved. Praise the Lord!

Another counselor reported that a boy named Tyson was also asking some great questions. I met Tyson last year at Elementary Camp. Apparently, he's been reading his Bible consistently throughout the past year, and he is very familiar with many Bible stories. It's encouraging when you see the progress of a seed that was planted a whole year before.

Tyson is also the boy who said his favorite part of camp was session time. Session time is when we worship God and hear a message from the Bible.

*The camp photo for Juniormentary Camp with everyone in it. Counselors, campers, staff... you name it!*

Cabin 8

I think the best decision I made at camp was to join cabin time. After the evening session, the campers get ready for bed and then spend some time in their cabins playing games and talking. Sometimes, the campers stay up way too late. But the late-night conversations are usually the most fruitful.

Joining cabin time was an excellent decision because I got to know some of the boys a lot better than I would have, like Dewey, Reis, and Keith. And we were able to have important conversations about the Bible.

Reis was known for trying to talk over everyone, but he also was the most curious camper and had fascinating questions about everything. He wanted to know when Satan was kicked out of heaven, and if Jesus visited hell before he was raised from the dead (so we talked about 1 Peter 3). He also wanted to know the details of how people are saved.

Lincoln and Andrew were the counselors for Cabin 8, and it was fun being their assistant counselor. I got to help them load Joe Boy into a trash bag so we could present him during the cabin scavenger hunt. In this kind of scavenger hunt, the cabins were not told what they were supposed to be looking for, so the goal was to grab everything in sight. As long as the items fit in the bag, they qualify. We were glad we stuffed Joe Boy in the trash bag because it turned out that "Camper" was on the list of items!

One night during cabin time, Dewey asked Lincoln's dad, Mr. Mack, "How often does God breathe?" Mr. Mack was slightly confused by the question, and then he realized what Dewey was misunderstanding. "God doesn't have a body," Mr. Mack explained, "so he doesn't need to breathe. God is spirit." It was awesome getting to answer these kinds of questions from the kids. Because once they knew the truth, they began to realize who God truly was.

God is working

Even though I could say more, I think what I've written so far will give you an adequate picture of what it was like. Through the bad weather, canceled camps, and troublesome campers, God was working for His glory.

“For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen.”
Romans 11:36 ESV