For many years, Hope Valley has put on an Easter Camp, spanning the entirety of Easter weekend at the Ankara Youth Camp in Walker Flat, SA. This is a weekend designed to minister to the High School and young adult members of the congregation and community. Walker Flat is about an hour outside the city on the banks of the mighty Murray River. It is a nice site for a camp such as this, but nothing like most camps in America. That is, it is not massive. It really is only a thin strip of land stretching along a section of the river. It is not particularly wide, nor is there a big playing area for games. In that sense it was very different to me, having
worked at camps for a long time. The thing that really sets it apart, however, is its geographic location. The view from the camp of the river and the limestone cliffs which comprise the other bank is just stunning. It is quiet and peaceful. As such, it was the perfect place for a nice retreat, providing the environment and the time for natural introspection and growth. Look at some of the stunning pictures I include in this post and the ones to follow.Australia has had a very rainy year. This has broken a long string of very dry summers and
drought. As such, the natural water table in South Australia is just bursting to capacity with water and new life. It is good for the land and beautiful to see. The problem, however, is that the subsequent flooding makes places like the River Murray unsafe. The river carries a bunch of stuff downstream which could hit you and has a quick current. These two things combined made the river unsafe enough for the kids that they were not allowed to swim or boat in it as they usually would. Though this was a bummer to a lot of the kids, I think of it now as a God-planned thing. Without the stress and busyness of the water and water activities, the kids had to entertain 
themselves in community and had a lot of time to just get away and think. Thus, time spent together was better and time spent apart was more possible. So God took a lemon and made us some lemonade. I love it when He does that!My good friend, Jon Joyce, as the young adults pastor, was in charge of the Easter Camp. He had been planning it for some time now and I helped him as much as possible with the logistics and schedule. Over the next few days, I would have a significant part in the programming and the speaking aspects of the camp. This allowed me to really take ownership of it and feel as if I was a valuable part of the event and not just another attendee. In some ways, I felt like a real pastor. It felt good.
A couple of other things for sake of setting the scene:
As this is mostly designed for High Schoolers and early Uni students, the young adults who came mostly acted as leaders. We broke the students up into life groups for the weekend and assigned leaders to each. I was assigned to a subset of the 12/3 group (of which I have spoken before). My group was great. Love them! The life groups met everyday to discuss the messages, share together, and life in prayer.
It's also important to note that the whole weekend is relatively relaxed. There is not a lot of programming to keep the kids busy and they can largely hang out and fill their time as they wish. Unlike an American summer camp where each group has a counselor with whom they must stay at all times, this was much more open. There are, of course, pros and cons to this setup. I think in this case there were more pros. It created a really unique environment.
Meals were supplied by us and cooked by some of the most delightful people in the church. I can't thank them enough for being so sweet and keeping my belly full.
Steve Crocker was the all around "man" for the camp, directing and making sure things ran on time.
Ok...that's about it. In the next few posts I will tell you about what I did at camp.
In Christ,
Chris
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