“Stand Firm in God’s Armor.” What do those words mean to you? For 68 energetic campers, the four days at camp provided an opportunity to explore the meaning of and understand more about the pieces of armor as they learned about them in every activity.

This year we changed the name of Gaga Ball to Gaga Zone to reinforce that competition is fine, but not more important than showing love. The activity lived up to its name when the older kids all teamed up to shelter one of the littlest campers to protect him. They learned in Christian living, at campfire, and throughout camp that you can stand strong alone, but we stand stronger together. These moments also remind us that we can learn from our youth and not just the other way around.

In music class the campers learned a song all about the armor of God that was composed by one of our Church members. They practiced it in music class and all together at campfire, and as a highlight at the end of camp, they performed it for our camp facility host.

Even though the weather was quite warm, cloud cover helped us out on our busiest day of activities. At our last campfire a sudden thunderstorm formed within a few minutes, but the lightning that impacted the rest of the region did not affect our camp, for which we were very grateful.

Campers also had opportunities to cool off from the summer heat in swimming, a popular favorite, as well as in aquatic kickball and in sports, where water activities showcased the battle between good and evil, where armor clad campers battled against objects that represented the negativity of this current age. Some of our campers proudly wore their “armor” all throughout camp, and when asked, one of the campers said it scratched a little bit to take on and off, but it was important to him to keep it on. Putting on the armor isn’t always easy to do every day, but the example of our campers playing Gaga Zone can hopefully encourage us all to remember it!