Sunday 15 October 2000

Ontario Mennonite Music Camp


Ontario Mennonite Music Camp

This page is my tribute to Ontario Mennonite Music Camp. I wish I had time to tell you all about everything that happened, but that would take about forever, so I'm just gonna say the best stuff.
I first went to OMMC in the summer of 1998. I went with one of my cousins. Both of us are from Manitoba, and we knew no one except each other. We got to know everyone really fast and it was awesome. Some of us new people were a little confused at first as to what the "cushy chairs" were. We were confused about many things, but after a few days, the camp was like home.
Here are the ten most memorable things about OMMC '98 (in no particular order).
  • "Take Me to Your Leader" at the Camper Concert.
  • I won both games at the birthday party.
  • The Shark Song
  • Crazy bus rides
  • Having late-night parties and almost getting caught.
  • The beach
  • My messy half of the room
  • The wedding with the fuschia bridesmaid dress
  • The lack of chocolate milk
  • Chuck the Chicken
In the summer of 1999 I went back again! It was so awesome! At first we didn't think it had been good as the last year, but looking back, I think most of us would say it was better. Me and Lisa got to give a tour of the campus. We made sure we explained what and where the cushy chairs are!!
I did three things at the camper concert this year. I was in a play, where we wrote our own much abridged Star Wars version of David and Goliath. I was Yoda! Me and a few other people went up and did the diarrhea song, including verses we made up ourselves! And of course me and Lisa had to do our traditional airband. This year it was "Pigs, Pigs, Pigs" by PFR!
Here's my list of top ten best things about OMMC '99.
  • Olympic bridge building!! (Sue, we're hungry!)
  • Watching the Princess Bride
  • Making up, and actually doing our own actions for the musical!
  • I got to be "Tha Teacha from tha hood!"
  • The CCOOFFEE!!
  • Juice with 'zing'!
  • Lisa getting in trouble on the first day (excuse me? We get TOLD when to go??)
  • Stealing the guys underwear
  • The Orville Slovakian Republic (It's a bird, it's a plane...no, it's a bird!)
  • The Stupid SongWell, that'll have to be it for now! I hope you can all see how extrememly much I love music camp!!

Thursday 12 October 2000

Beaver Creek Bible Camp

I did promise a long time ago that I'd tell all of you about camp, and now it's how many months later, here it is. This is pasted together from the few emails I managed to send this summer, so it might be kinda confusing, but it's here!!



The first week of camp I was at was LDC (Leadership Development Camp). LDC was so awesome! I got there on Saturday evening after I'd been in Winnipeg at the EMC Conference all day and only had an hour to throw everything I own into two suitcases, two backpacks and assorted plastic bags. It was hectic, but I made it!
We were so incredibly hyper and energetic all week. Our goal was to scare the campers as much as possible by being so happy. We cheered when we got to clean the washrooms and stuff like that. It was fun!!
We slept in tents for the first two nights. The camp out sites were a lot better than the last time I went which was like four years ago and I had a very bad time and that is an incredibly long story, totally unrelated to what I'm saying. But it was good. We were there for a two days before any campers got there so we could get to know each other first. We had a very slack first two days. It was so good though.
Our sessions were incredibly intense. We had a guy from LiMiT to do them. I dunno if you've heard of them before. I never had before I went to LDC. What they do is camps and seminar type stuff all the develop leaders.
We did all these TDAs (Team Devolopment Activities/Totally Dumb Activities) to build team unity. We had to do stuff like the human knot without talking for an hour. We did another game called Killer Beam in which we couldn't talk for two hours. That was hard because I talk all the time, but it was such a growing experience to have to do that.
That's only such a tiny little bit of what we did, but it would take me a couple hours to write everything about it, so I'm just gonna leave it here I think.





I was going to write to everyone about LDC, but then I didn't have time cuz I went back to camp the very next day to be a kitchen helper. It was a great week in many ways except that by Friday the tension in the kitchen was so high. Me and the other kitchen helper so totally did not get a long with the head cook, so yeah. But we managed to still be nice to her, and respect her, it was just very hard.
In other ways it was a great week. Me and two of my friends were the "patrols" during Mission Impossible. All we had to do was walk around and make sure everyone was behaving. The director told us we needed to take our job seriously, but we kinda forgot to. I was singing, cuz there was music playing through the awesome sound system and you could hear it all over the camp, and it was kinda distracting me from patrolling. We started a dance in the parking lot, and used flashlights for strobe lighting.
In some ways I'm very glad the week is over. I gotta get up tomorrow and teach Sunday School and then I have to pack and be back at camp by 4:00. I still have to finish doing laundry. Sometimes I almost wish I wasn't having such a busy summer. I would love to sit at home and do nothing but watch TV all day, but I just gotta remind myself that this is all for God. Pray that God would give me energy to keep doing this for him, especially since I'm assistant counseling this next week.





I finaly got to use the camp computer so I can email people, but it's a Macintosh, so it doesn't work! Thank you to everyone for emailing me though. And thanks so much for praying for me. You'll never know how much that has meant to me.
This past month that I've been at camp has been fun, but it has also been so hard. Last week was my first time counseling. The senior counselor was Jolene Kroeker, and we had an awesome time together. She was a great person to counsel with for my first time. I think I also got a pretty good cabin for my first time. My girls were very hyper and sometimes a little too cuddly, but I love them!
Some stuff I want you to pray for is that all of my girls will continue to grow spiritually even thought they've left camp now. Most of them said they were Christians, but I'm not totally sure where all of them are at. One girl didn't like to go to church because it was too "hot, boring, and for old people", so we challenged her to start a youth group. Pray that she'll follow through on that.
There was also one girl in my canoeing class who is anorexic. We tried to help her as much as we could, but one week isn't going to do a lot. She needs serious help.
This week I just want you to pray for energy for us as staff. I am the horsemanship assistant this week, and it is way too hot for me out at the corrals. I get really bad headaches from the sun everyday, and the nurse was worried about me fainting, so just pray that I would continue to stay healthy and strong. Also, I'm going home after this week, but a lot of the staff is staying on even longer. One counselor as been sick almost all summer already and he's still staying.
I need to end this message as much as I would love to keep on going. The camp director will kick me off in 5 minutes if I don't get off. I'm back home next week so I should have time to email people more.

All Star United Concert

The Concert


UPDATED MAY 25, 5000
On Satuday I went to the ASU concert in Winnipeg. It was at the U of W for this big youth thing called Youth Conference. I couldn't go for the whole weekend, but they sold tickets for just the concert. I went with one of my cousins. Absolutely everyone else was busy. I guess ASU isn't as a big a priority to everyone else as it is to me. It was an awesome concert, but some stuff was disappointing, like not getting to stay for the whole thing. My parents had given us a ride in, cuz we live an hour or so from Winnipeg, and they went to do other stuff while we were there, but they said they'd pick us up at eleven and I thought that would be fine, cuz I was sure it would be over by then, and if I wanted to buy stuff or get anything autographed, I could get them to let us stay a little longer if I had to. But then just before the concert started some idiot pulled the fire alarm so we all had to file out of the building and get away from it while the fire dept. came to turn it off. They knew someone had pulled it cuz that had happened there earlier that day. It wouldn't have been bad, except that then the concert started more than half an hour late, and we didn't get to stay until the end after all.
I couldn't mosh either and that was the worst part. Both me and my cousin had been in an accident two weeks before the concert, and we were both sore and not feeling good, and we have back problems. We met all these people there, and they were like "Are you guys into moshing?". We both are, soooooo much, but we couldn't. However, I did get pics. Not good pictures, but still...And I bought stickers for my guitar!! That's a good thing! Must look on the positive side. Well, since I didn't really get to see much of the concert, I'll leave you with that. It was a very good concert, cuz, I mean--it's ALL STAR UNITED!!!!! It had to be good. It just wasn't as good as the one at Youth Quake, cuz of all the other things.
Oh yeah, and as we were leaving, we heard the fire alarm go off again.

I went to the ASU concert at Youth Quake 2000 in Caronport, Saskatchewan. Youth Quake is this really big youth retreat put on by Briarcrest Bible College.
The W's opened for them, and that was awesome too, but I only knew about two of their songs then, so they kinda all sounded the same. But then, after the much needed intermission, ALL STAR UNITED came on!! They started off with "La La Land". It was exactly as good live as I had imagined it would be! The mosh pit was completely wild. I was desperately hanging on to one of my friends the whole time to keep us from gettin seperated. It was a little harder to make it to the front of the mosh pit that way, but against all the odds we didn't lose each other. And we did make it to the front for a couple songs, although we didn't manage it for "Superstar". Now Superstar, was so awesome! They started all slow and sad and pretended to be choked up:
Wistful for disco
We get a little misty rememebering Menuedo
And all those old pros
The bay city rollers and Pinky Tuscedero
And then they had this long pause, and went into the rest of it loud and fast like they do on the CD. It was really awesome.
There were guys from Briarcrest up on stage throwing rolls of toilet paper off. It looked kinda cool until thousands of people moshed on it. And they also had supersoakers on stage, soaking all of us in the mosh pit. I would have passed out from the heat or something if they hadn't done that, because it was so sweaty in there. By the end they had given up supersoakers and they just dumped pails of water on us. After the concert everyone was soaking with either sweat, water, or both.
Another song that they did really good was "Thank you, Goodnight". Ian talked for a little bit before they started and it and I was like "please let it be 'Thank you, Good night'" because it sounded like that's what they were gonna go in to, and they did!! I was very excited!!
Well, I think this is gonna be all for now. When I go to their concert in May, I'll add more.