It is 8.15pm on the first day of camp and the site has descended into relative peacefulness for an hour as the campers are hunting the leaders around Coniston. They have 1 hour to find as many of the 6 hidden leaders as they can and extract a signature from them.

The first day of camp is a day of meeting old friends, making new ones and settling into the surroundings of John Ruskin school. We have spent most of the afternoon playing games in tent groups to help everyone get to know the people that they are spending the week with. The weather has been cloudy but warm and after 4 hours outside, everyone was ready for the fried chicken, wedges and salad, followed by cherry or apple pie and ice cream.

The theme for this week is Narnia. It is 50 years since C.S.Lewis died. We have a huge lion on the dining room wall and a proper lamppost is in the dining hall too. Tent names and activities for the week will be around this theme. The campers and leaders are already well into the daily game of Narnia Top trumps with the winner from each day reaching the grand final ‘Trump off’ on Friday evening.

This week we are going to be looking at the parables in the Gospel of Luke. Tonight we are going to start by looking at who Luke was and why he recorded many of the parables that Jesus told. Throughout the week we will be studying the parables to see what Jesus is saying to us through them.

Please pray for a good nights sleep for everyone. For some people it will be their first night ever under canvas.

Matt Prescott
Camp Leader

See more of today’s photos in the Camp 2013 Day 1 set on our Flickr channel