First night of CAMPING

The long-awaited day finally arrived for everyone. We started in the middle of the day, left all our activities and prepared with our family to start the first training camp of this year.

After midday, we got ready with everything we needed to survive two days away from home camping with the club. We arrived at the campsite and began setting up the tents and porches, contacting and marking out the area for each unit. Since this was an instructional camp, all the activities included different specialties. We had tent pitching, porch pitching, and in one case, rudimentary tent pitching. To pass this specialty, those who pitched their tent would have to spend the night there.

Before the sun went down we gathered to sing together, read a biblical reflection and welcome the Sabbath together. Here we already had many more expectations than what the start of camp would be like since it was our first night and here after the meditation what followed was preparing dinner (this is also part of the specialty we must do). For this, each unit with its leader and counselor should prepare their dinner. In our case, our dinner was pizza. Hugo and one of the members of our unit made a catupirí chicken pie (all homemade).

After some units lit a fire, they made fried eggs, others made noodles with their respective sauces, others made sandwiches of different flavors, in one case they made pan-fried pizza, something strange but delicious. After all these dinner activities, one of the night games began. Each unit had to find different clues scattered around the camp. Each of these clues was accompanied by a leader, and that leader had to sign the unit's card if they completed the challenge they had discovered. It was a very entertaining game; I was assigned to be one of the clues and had to hide in a dark place among the vegetation. At the end of this activity, we gathered for a final reflection and went to sleep. This is also one of the most difficult times for the leaders and counselors, as we have to calm down the little ones who just want to play and are also excited about their first camp with the older group.

This is how we ended the first night, in my particular case: upon entering the tent to rest after inflating the mattress and preparing everything, I realized that I had forgotten to bring a blanket and my jacket, so imagine that I had nothing to cover myself with. At first, the temperature was ideal, but after a few hours, around three in the morning, the cold got worse and that's when I could only get a raincoat and a towel to wrap myself in and not be so cold, but hey: that's part of the activity: "survive."