Monday's theme was "Jesus changes our lives." We had a normal schedule in the morning; we started with morning devotions and then ate breakfast. After breakfast, we had different crews -- KP clean up, crafts, and worship preparation. I worked with the group that had worship preparation that morning. We chose a few songs to fit with the theme, as well as some of the campers' favorite songs. A few other staff members and I also came up with the idea of giving them 1 or 2 songs to get up and dance, since a lot of them really love dancing. After worship preparation, it was time for morning worship, skits from the night before, and reviewing the lesson. I played piano for worship that morning, along with another staff member on guitar and one on ukulele. We chose songs that they would all know, along with ones with fun actions that would get them moving. Then, each group was given a few minutes to get their props and costumes together for their skits and then performed one group at a time. Since each group had a different story, they each got a different aspect of the theme for the previous day. Today's skits included the stories, "Zacchaeus," "Saul's Conversion," and "The True Vine." After the skits were presented, the campers were given a review session to quiz them on what the skits taught them. This was done in the form of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," and there were some smaller prizes they could get if they answered a question right. I really liked this method of reviewing; it put it in a fun format for them, and they interacted with each other through the "phone a friend" option (there were 2 cordless phones they could give to a friend in the audience and talk to them about which answer is correct if they weren't sure). After the review session, we paired up with 2 staff members and 2 or 3 campers for a prayer time. We grouped them based on pictures they had colored the day before so that we could talk about each lesson before praying and put the campers with new people to interact with. It was a cool twist on prayer partners, and we encouraged the campers to pray if they wanted or offer ideas of what to pray for on that particular day.
After lunch that afternoon, the campers had a shortened rest time because of the special event for the day -- bowling! Each of the staff was paired with 1 or 2 campers to bowl together and ride together on the bus. It was fun to see how excited the campers were about bowling; for some of them, it was all they would talk about for the whole week leading up to going. My partner was especially excited by the end because when we had to stop our second game to go back to camp, she was beating me. (: When we got back, there was a bit of free time before supper and then a worship service and study groups after lessons. I helped the group lead the worship service and played piano, and we even had one of the campers come up and lead the group in line-dancing. We also had a congo line around the room while the other 2 staff members and I played music for them to dance to. It was a really fun activity to add in, and I think they really enjoyed a chance to get up and move around during the service. I helped with the study about "the Pool of Bethseda" today, and we worked on our skit after we talked about the lesson with our group. After that, we had snack and campfire. The campfires were very fun this week; we chose a lot of upbeat songs with actions, and all of the campers sang very enthusiastically. Some of the campers even started their own songs, which was cool to see which were the favorites for the week.
