Summer Camp 2006

Summer Camp Review

Sunday We arrived late in the evening and it was straight to dinner. The dining hall is awesome, adorned with almost 100 different animals. We had some food and went back to unpack. Later that night we had our first meeting and then off to bed for us.


Monday Monday started as a normal day, breakfast, meeting, small groups, but then it came time for picture time to take the group photo. Well we hit somewhat of a snag, it started raining. So the photo was quickly snapped and we ran for cover in the lunch hall. Due to the rain they had to cancel all lake activities and we were all very very sad. But they opened the pool for night swim (the rain had stopped) and we had a great day still.

Tuesday Monday not only canceled lake time free time but it canceled our first olympic competition. So tuesday we had our first event which was a swim relay. I have to be honest our teams rocked. Teams were decided cabins, so we had a girls team and a guys team and both placed very well. But to be honest, the girls beat the guys time by 2 seconds.




Wednesday Today the competition was the wacky race and boy was it wacky. I was asked to speak at the camp this year and for Wednesday night's meeting I gave a message on Jesus walking on water. In a few weeks, I am going to get the CD of everyone's message and i will upload the messages for those that want a refresher course.




Thursday was Iron man day. It was a gruelling competition, a run, a swim, another run, a rock climb and finally a bike ride. We did sustain one injury, but she was okay in the end. It was a great race, not an Amazing Race... but still it was quality. Thursday we also made up the missed competition from Monday, The water balloon hitter game. The game goes like this, five people behind a water balloon launcher, shooting at five people 100 feet away in a small circle. And can i say the guys owned this event. They scored 7 points, most teams scored 0 and the 2nd place only had like 3 points. This event moved us from last or close to it, to 3rd place.

Friday Friday was sweet for two reasons. It was our last olympic event, the boat race. The rules were simply this, make a boat out of cardboard and ducttape, you cant use any supplies not provided, go. The guys and the girls both had excellent designs and both placed well. But i really enjoyed Friday because of the baptism. 20 students from OHills were baptized and 1 accepeted the Lord. It was a beautiful day.

Summer Camp Photos are here. To be honest the photos are not in order, but they are all there. There is something like 600 photos, so it make take some time to check them all out. We did get photos of everyone that was baptized, so if at first you don't see yourself, keep looking, you are somewhere else. I will also add a write up later, but for now its nap time ZZZzzzzzzzzz
Sleep well everyone

Dreams

I have taken on many projects in my life, different ideas i have had that i thought would be really cool. The expanding batman cape has always been a favorite, a car that starts with a remote control, both things i accomplished and was quite proud of. But there has been one project that i never got passed the design stage. I drew picture after picture, even designed it on the computer, but never reached the manufacturing stage. Probably due to cost and not being able to utilize it. But to my glee today someone has taken my vision and made a production unit of the fish tank toilet. That is correct, a toilet that doubles as a fish tank. Its beautiful, even comes with a special seat cover. If you dont believe me feel free to click the pciture and check out the website. Now be warned, this will set you back $450. But you will have the coolest bathroom on the block. And not to be morbid, but if one of the fishes start to say float to the top and stop playing with the other fishies, then disposal should be quite easy.

Wednesday Night we started the final chapter of James, which will probably be the chapter we focus on the longest. James once again talks about money, and James was very very passionate. James was talking to be who called themselves Christians, but they were using their wealth very poorly. They would make people work for them and not pay the workers, they would owe people money, and instead of paying them back they would just keep it, or they would even bribe judges. James should us that it is not wrong to have money or even to be rich, but that we need to use our money wisely and fairly.

Staff Pages Are Here

Make sure to check out the Staff Pages, they are awesome!

Summer Camp Info

Summer Camp is less than a week away, we are leaving this Sunday. Please make sure to turn in your final paperwork, there is a link to the right to download it. I was quite excited to see the great turnout we had for summer camp, we are taking more than twice the number of people we originally planned for. But don't worry we have ample leadership. In fact many are quite surprised to see how awesome of a team we have here in Amped Ministries. Currently we have 12 leaders who are there on a weekly basis, and to get to know them better I have made staff pages! So click the link or follow the link to the right and get to know your Amped Team Better!

Book of Song Lyrics

From what other people tell me, i have some pretty bad taste in music. And what makes it worse is i can listen to the same songs over and over and over. Just last week i listened to the same 3 songs for 3 hours straight. Each song plays 6 times every hour, so i guess i heard each song at least 18 times. And what is sad, is most people can't listen to the entire song even once. But the reason i like most songs is the lyrics, they say something really cool and they sound so cool how they do it. This is one of the reasons I really like the book of Psalms. It is a collection of all of Israel's favorite music. Spaning over a thousand years this book is one of the largest in the entire Bible, having more chapters than any other book and it is just a giant song book, with different sytles and types of music. And the Psalms are written by different people in different times of thier lives. This past weekend we looked at the first half of psalms, chapters 1-72 and we saw some really cool stuff. We saw that chapter 3 is about King David having to run away from his son cause his son wanted to kill him, we saw in chapter 23 David comparing God to a shepherd and we are His sheep, and finally we peeked at Psalm 51 which is the Psalm David wrote after the biggest mistake he made in his life. I can't wait to finish the book next week.

So next week we will be adding staff pages to the website. It will have photos of each leader from Amped as well as a Bio and things they enjoy in life. Make sure to check it out, cause it will be awesome!

Hamburger Day

Photos are online, click to left to view them. In the end i believe the hamburger was roughly 32 patties and buns tall

Printing Photos

I like Photos. If you look to your right, you will notice lots and lots of links to photos. I have been asked, "As a parent how do i order prints of those photos?" An excellent question, and quite easily answered. To host our photos online we use a service called Flickr. Flickr is a great place to upload photos so anyone can view them. To print photos from Flickr, you first must be a member, but the good news is membership is free. Simply go to their website, www.flickr.com and select "Sign In" then select "Create a new account". Follow thier instructions. Once you have created your membership view any photos from any Amped event. In each of our sets (a set is a group of photos from a specific trip) you will now see an extra option, "Make stuff". You can select anything from the list, making regular old prints, DVDs, posters, even beautiful photo books.

World's Largest Hamburger

Tomorrow is the World's Largest Hamburger. Its going to be awesome. So I was doing some research to see who has the largest hamburgers, a resturaunt named Denny's Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania used to serve the World's largest hamburger. It contained 6 pounds of meat. Now let me put that in perspective, if you were to eat a McDonald's Quarter Pounder you would need to eat 24 of them to equal 1 Denny's burger. The burger was so large they had a contest and prizes to anyone who could eat it in 3 hours. No one could do it, not a soul could devour the monstrosity. Then on one fateful evening, Kate Stelnick, stepped into the resturant and ordered the beast. Most people mocked her, seeing that she was 19 years old and weighed 100 pounds. But she took the challenge, fighting the beast, eating the burger and 5 more pounds of side dishes. In less than 3 hours she conqured and became the only person to vanquish the 6 pound burger. But low and behold another resturant starting serving a larger burger so they could hold the record of the world's largst burger. But oh no, the chefs at Denny's would not take that, they unvieled the 15 pound burger. (Picutred on the left) Most would stop at this giant, compared to Leviathon himself, this burger is more than any man (or woman, since no man can eat the 6 pound one) can handle. Yet this wasn't enough for the chefs, they think much like Evan, "how can we make this better?" So Denny's recently released the 50 pound burger! Yes, you heard me right, Five Zero pounds of beef and buns. (Pictured Right) Let me try to explain the size of this. 200 Quarter Pound CheeseBurgers, 10 Hand weights, or half the weight of an average Jr. Higher. That my friends is a lot of food. But just wait, this Fridaday Amped Ministries is going to attempted the World's Largest Hamburger, a difficult Feat, but we will try.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you Tomorrow

Tomorrow was James main focus at the end of chapter 4. That we should be careful of our planning for the future. James doesnt tell us never to make plans and to live our life like we are some leaf that just blows around from here to there, but to rather make plans. But when we make plans we have to make them knowing that they could change. That if we see God's will or if God is calling us to do something, we need to be willing to drop our plans and follow His. Now at first this doesnt sound so great, i mean its nice having plans, and its never fun not being able to do somethign that you had planned on doing. But we always have to remember that God has better plans than we do. So if we drop our plans and follow His we are much much better off.

Creationism

First things first, all Mexico photos are uploaded, you can click the link on the right to view them. I always try to get photos uploaded the same day or the next day, so they are up now. Also don't forget, this Friday is the World's Largest Hamburger Day. This will be our only event that is not at Ocean Hills Church. We are meeting at the beach! So join us at noon on Friday at Doheny State Beach for the BBQ. Doheny does charge for parking so if you don't want to get stuck with the ten dollar parking fee you have two options: If you take Del Obipso past PCH and then make a left on Puerto PL there is somewhat of a jetty and you can drop your student off and you should be able to see us from there, we will have signs. Or you can drop your student off at Ocean Hills between 11:45 and 12:10 and we will shuttle people. If you have any questions you can always call the church at 949-496-7411 or email me at evan@oceanhillschurch.com

Well this past Sunday Matthew spoke on Creationism. It was crazy how amazing God is. What I got most out of Matthew's message is this, God created everything, small stuff from our eyeballs and bird's feathers to really really big stuff like Earth and all the stuff in space. Matthew even showed some photos of how small earth and the sun are in comparision to other things in the universe. I uploaded those photos in case you missed them. But what is so cool is God did create all of this, but He loves us so much. His favorite creation isn't the sun or one of the giant planets. His favorite creation isnt trees or aligators or monkeys, but He loves people. God loves us so much, and that is so cool.
Also this weekend was our trip to Mexico. And it was so cool. And by cool I mean awesome, not cool as in temperature cause it was very very hot. But we had a great time making new friends and playing games. I was told we were one of the most respectful youth groups they have ever seen and that was so cool to hear. I cant wait to go back, hopefully next time it wont be 105 outside, but the high heat did make the popsicles taste that much better. (Unless of course you got one of the chili popsicles, cause those were pretty hot too.

Wars we Fight

Well Tomorrow is Mexico Missions day. If you are looking for specific info, look one post down. I am really excited, its going to be a great day. But this past Wednesday we looked at the start of James chapter 4 and learned about 3 different types of wars we fight. Sometimes we war against ourselves, other times its against other people, and finally sometimes we war against God. looking at the text we learned the best way to win a war is not to fight. Now this doesn't mean when someone wants to fight you you run away fast as lightining, although that may work at times, what James is telling us is dont put yourself in situations where wars could start. If we don't get jealous about things other people have we are a lot less likely to want to fight them over it. If we have a strong prayer life and chill with God we are less likely to befriend the world, which is the enemy of God. And all i know is I i dont want to be an enemy of God, cause i know He would win hands down!

So as i scoured the internet as i normally do looking for the newest gadgets and accessories for our modern day like I happened across this pen. Now i like pens a lot, I even have "my own pen" Its Green, much like Amped, and it is called a Pilot Precises V5. You can see it to the right. My trick to life is I am the only person that I know that buys this pen. I buy them 12 at a time. The secret is that if I ever see someone using this pen i know they stole it from me, cause first its a weird kind of pen and secondly it is green. the college pastor Brandon kept writing in green and i called him a thief then i bought him the same type of pen but in Dodger Blue. But let me get to my point now, i found this pen today. Not only does it have a radio built into it, cause i have seen that before. This has a paper shredder built into it. So when you are passing notes is class and you're writing about something personal and the school bully walks up to you, you used to have to either let him/her read the note, or quickly swallow it, which is dangerous and hard to digest, but now you can quickly shred it. Now no one will know the contents of your note.

Mexico Missions Info

I wanted to post a little info regaurding our upcoming Mexico Mission Trip. We are leaving this Saturday bright and early at 5:45am. Please don't be late as we might have to leave without you and that would make everyone very sad. Please have your student bring some sort of identification. It is not necessary to have a passport, but a school ID or birth certificate. We will then be leaving and having breakfast at the border right before we cross, so please bring money for breakfast, lunch and dinner will be provided by us. We are then traveling to Casa Celestia Orphanage. Come prepared for a hot day, so wear modest clothing that can help you withstand the heat. We will be bringing water, but it is never a bad idea to bring some water. Also bring some suntan lotion as it is quite possible to get a sunburn, a hat might be wise too. Although I can't think of anything to buy other than breakfast, it wouldn't be a bad idea to pack some extra cash, but definetly not necessary. The plan is to arrive back at Ocean Hills Church at 9pm the same evening. We are traveling in a caravan of vans and cars.