Life of Lydia

Note: I wrote most of this post back in June, but I forgot to finish and publish it until now!

Last week I got to go to Camp Barnabas as a missionary with my church, Ridgecrest. My friend Molly also got to come with Ridgecrest.

Camp Barnabas is a summer camp for individuals with special needs. Each camper is paired one on one with a missionary. We were with our campers 23 of the hours in each day, and our job was to take care of them and be their friend during camp. Some of the notable activates we did were, Bible studies, pool time, arts and crafts, games, and nightly themed parties.

Although we had Bible lessons three times a day, what I loved the most was that we had the opportunity to show our campers God’s love through how we loved them. And it is only by God’s grace that I was able to keep going and keep putting others first throughout this hard but very fulfilling week!

Camper-missionary photos taken during Bible study.

The pool at Camp Barnabas was so much fun! it featured water slides and a lazy river.

We spent a lot of time doing art and bracelet making. I spent most of camp wearing various jewelry items that my camper made for me.

Each camper got to help screen print their camp shirt.

Each night there was a themed party. The themes were: under the sea (which was just swimming with background music), carnival, western, and royal ball.

Carnival party. This party featured a duck tank. Campers were encouraged to dunk their missionary. I was not a huge fan of this…

Western party. This one was my favorite. It was held at the farm. everyone got snacks and they drew wanted signs off the campers.

Royal Ball. This was supposed to be a dance, but we ended up playing mini golf and nine square a good chunk of the time.

Ridgecrest group photo.

Group photo of our cabin G3, taken outside the dining hall. I was VERY IMPRESSED with how well camp Barnabas accommodated for food allergies. I had gone up to the counter to get my special meal and the lady told me to put away my chips from the regular diets table because it might cross contaminate glutton. Usually I get upset when reprimanded, but in this case, it made me feel well assured that my food would not contain any allergens.