Champion of the World
By: Peter Bunyard
As I drove back to Royston on the Sunday after the youth TLC summer camp with a car full of sleeping beauties (teenagers mostly sleep by day I think) I had a few moments to reflect on this year’s craziness at Lambourne End. In terms of ingredients to make a memorable camp you need to start with 4 anxious adults and 9 hyper-active teenagers, add 5 leaky tents, 1 dusty hut and 4 very old toilets. Then mix generously with spiders, moths and cobwebs, marinade in lashings of sunshine and garnish with a splash of rain water. One perfect and enjoyable weekend had by all.
As you can probably guess we decided to be a little more rustic this year; an opportunity to get back to nature and be a little more self reliant. We arrived in the middle of a rain storm on Friday night which wasn’t a promising start and as the heavens poured we made mad dashes to tents and loosely set about the task of settling in, getting fed and unpacking. After dinner and a chat from Tim our indomitable activities leader we bravely donned our waterproofs (although it was questionable whether some of the fashionable items worn were actually waterproof) and headed off for our first activity of the weekend, that being archery.
I think we proved to be quite good at archery, there were certainly some high scores and Rosie was our overall champion – being the most improved person from her first shot at the target to her last. Everyone managed to overcome their aiming issues and actually hit the board by the end of the session and the centre of the target was liberally peppered with arrows by the last round. Tim was certainly very impressed by our efforts, although Kathryn succeeded in losing an arrow in the grass, which despite our best efforts was never found again - there is always one!
After archery we returned to the hut to escape the rain and settled down for a bit of role playing and teaching. Our theme was honour your mother and father and the guys had to try to convince Matt and Janeane (their pretend parents in the game) why they should be allowed to do things that the average parent wouldn’t approve of. The game called for negotiation skills, imagination and outright cheek. All three qualities were displayed in ample abundance by all the contestants but 
Will was our eventual winner. All I can say is, what a smooth-talker, he positively oozed charm and our panel of smooth talking experts (themselves teenagers) were duly impressed. I was left wondering if Ruth (his mother) was actually able to deny him anything, such was the power of his silky prose.
My favourite activities of the weekend happened on Saturday morning, namely the team-building tasks. We had 4 challenging tasks to complete: cross a gaping chasm on planks; pass through a spider’s web of rope without touching it; get a marble from A to B with drain pipes and finally cross the increasingly high assault course walls. We managed the chasm OK despite one false start, and I have some very interesting pictures of everyone piled up on top of each other to anchor the plank, it certainly helped to be heavy so I was OK. The marble challenge proved to be a little more difficult. After providing a seamless motorway of pipes for our plucky marble to travel along we managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by letting it plunge into the grass millimetres from its final ‘yellow bucket’ destination, whoops. Never mind, second time round we had it so sorted you could barely see the marble travelling such was the speed of its gravity assisted dash along the pipes - within seconds the marble rolled effortlessly into the bucket.
Much fun was had on the spider’s web, where various people were manhandled through tiny gaps. Will showed just how flexible he is by contorting himself through the tiniest of spaces, while Matt and myself had our faces rubbed in the dirt as we scrambled underneath the web. A good exercise in humility!
Finally we tackled the walls! Working as a team we had to cross walls of increasing heights, the last one being 15 feet tall. The first two proved easy, but the last one stretched us all a little. Poor Poppy suffered a few heart stopping moments of dangling in mid air before we managed to haul her to safety and Matt, Janeane and I proved to be pretty handy human ladders as the teenagers scrambled from our hands to our shoulders to get to the top. Brilliantly though we all made it, and Tim was very impressed that we achieved so much. Believe it or not he said our success was down to the teenagers listening well to instructions, I almost made him write that down!!
After the team builds we set about the ropes course with much bravado, we had tackled the course last year so we knew the ropes if you’ll excuse the pun. Luke, Will and Pete positively raced across the course and the girls were not far behind, especially Kathryn. Poppy very courageously and rather ambitiously set about crossing the cargo net mostly upside down until finally righted by a rather anxious Tim.
While Ruth had all our hearts in our mouths as she bravely crossed the tyre-swings, we were treated to a spectacle of gutsy determination as she teetering on the brink of a fateful plunge into the murky depths below. When she finally reached the far platform our relief and admiration was truly heart felt. The final obstacle on the rope course however was by far the trickiest and a plunge in the pond was the order of the day for some, I think Amy went in and Poppy, although the adults escaped humiliation this year - well almost, I did do a rather nice Elvis impression with very shaky legs in the middle... 'thank you very much.'
After an afternoon of fencing and a brief dip in the pool to cool off the guys set about building cooking fires on Saturday night and it must be said they almost disproved the old saying that ‘where there is smoke there is a fire’. With a little assistance however, and a short lesson in the difference between kindling and coddling they managed to coax some flames from the twigs and had those sausages sizzling in no time, followed by burgers, kebabs, marshmallows, bananas and chocolate and finally chips courtesy of Poppy; boy teenagers can eat!! I think chief fire lighting expert though goes to Suzie who braved the smoke and diligently cooked her way through not only her own food but I suspect half the other guys too. We enjoyed a time of praise and worship after dinner whilst basking in the fading light of day and glow from the campfire. I think we all felt pretty close to God that evening, and I was very impressed by some of the spirit led insights that the guys had about their own lives and others, I look forward to hearing more!
Well Sunday saw our last exercise of the weekend, a 10 mile cycle on mountain bikes through Hainault forest. The boys are bursting at the seams to race away from the pack but Tim firmly kept them on a tight leash, much to their disappointment I think. However when it comes to boys and bikes showing off is never far from the agenda and Will treated us to a spectacular wipe-out slide in the dust, which he rather seemed to enjoy, and Pete and Luke attempted to jump over just about every lump and bump they could find. We all paused briefly to admire the gleaming spires of commerce towering up from the heart of London, namely Canary Warf, the London Eye and the Gherkin; we were only several miles outside the centre after all, and then headed back to camp. There was however one last challenge: a very steep and bumpy path to descend. You could either descend slowly....or quickly depending on your degree of stupidity and almost certainly your gender. Needless to say it wasn’t probably my best role model moment as I tore down the path, only slowing to ensure I didn’t flatten Pete en route, I do like mountain biking.
Well how would I summarise the weekend, well I think Poppy pretty much did that for us really. She gave everything 100% effort, overcame some big personal challenges and just never gave up. We were so impressed we awarded her the accolade of weekend champion. In truth it wasn’t an easy call to make as her performance was true of so many. The guys worked really well as a team, rose to the challenge of helping run their own camp and stretched themselves in all the activities they did. I’m really looking forward to seeing us all move forward this year, learning more about ourselves and most importantly God. I think we all learned over the weekend that time invested with God reaps a fantastically rich reward.
Posted: 9/9/09
