Camp Helaman

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I had a severe bout of laziness followed by a couple cases of the camps. Fortunately, I'm feeling better now.

Two weeks ago from June 24 to 28 I had the pleasure of going to something called "Camp Helaman". Basically it's a missionary prep camp. We're paired up into companionships that were organized into districts that were organized into zones. The companionships had to stay together at all times and in all places (bathrooms excluded). We had a morning schedule and evening devotionals. The food was always really good.

Calling it a camp would be somewhat of a misnomer. Sure, we all slept outside in adorondacs (or whatever they're called), but 90% of the time was spent in the dining hall. We had our meals there as well as most of our classes. The only ones not in the dining hall were either just outside of it or in a room just by it. We also had lessons where we used the "Preach My Gospel" manuals, and even got to teach a few lessons with it as companionships. Granted, one's mileage during that activity woud vary quite a lot depending on one's companion and the attitude of the pretending investigators. I heard of an instance where a companionship pretended to be a gay couple when taught.

...yeah. Guess who'll need some work before going on a mission.

Anyways, we also had a couple of fun activities. On Thursday we did a service project. We went to a park in the very town in which we all lived and helped spruce it up. I helped pick up the remains of a felled tree, shoveled some dirt into some holes, and sweeped the concrete. Afterwards we played Ultimate Frisbee for an hour, with the three zones rotating in every point. The project was fun, but it would have been better if it was on the last day and we went home afterwards.

On Friday we had a nice hike. The trail was some sort of private logging road that wasn't being used at the time. Overall, it was a gradual uphill climb. The scenery was cool, but nothing particularly breathtaking. It was a pretty hot day, so I managed to use up all of the water I brought. At the halfway point of the hike, our leaders (who happened to be rather slowpokish), told some stories about our pioneer ancestors and such. The latter half of the hike was mostly downhill, so quite a few people decided to race on ahead. Most of us were glad that it was starting to get shady. The total length of the hike was about 9 or 10 miles, meaning it was a fairly respectable hike, but definitely not a remarkable journey of any sort.

On Saturday we had a couple classes, packed up, had testimony meeting, and left shortly thereafter at 5 PM. Overall "camp" was a fun excursion.