2000-07-28 - Friday - $300 certificate I won.

West Coast Camp:

This was on the last full day at Word of Life's (WOL) West Coast Camp (WCC) in Lassen Pines which was generally held the last two weeks of July each year.

Second Time Here

I attended this camp as a camper for five consecutive summers or years from 1999 to 2003. So, this is was my second time at this camp.

July of 2000

The date on this certificate confirms we attended the last week of July of 2000. We generally would attend the second week each summer that I attended minus maybe one or as many as like three. Perhaps my last 3 summers, we went the first week meaning the second to last week of July in 2001, 2002, and 2003. I think one of them must have been the first week. Maybe more than one. I think my first summer in 1999 was the last week of July. According to this certificate here, as seen in the photo included above, we attended the second week, AKA the last week of July of 2000.

Hillsboro Community Baptist Church (HCBC)

I would attend the camp with this church. It became my favorite church I attended a bunch during high school from 2000-2004. I attended a few other churches too sometimes. But I was mostly attending this church on most Sundays. Well, maybe not every Sunday. Depending on the year, I did a bunch of different things.

Teens Involved (TI)

Word Of Life has Olympians, a Bible club, for children, and they also have Teens Involved for the youth. So, I was involved in Olympians at my first church, Community Baptist Church in Cornelius, Oregon, USA. We had Olympians like in or around 1992. It might have been just the fall of 92 to the spring of 1993, that school year. I don't remember if we had the club other times there. So, I was in it around that time and I have some memories of that. I was seven years old that year. I started attending Olympians at the Hillside Bible Church probably around the winter of 1994, that is around January, the 1993-1994 school-year. I invited a church friend, Brian Bishop, to AWANA's Sparkies. That was a similar Bible club, it would meet at the First Baptist Church in Hillsboro, Oregon on Wednesday nights. In return, he invited me to Olympians at the Hillside Bible Church which met on Tuesday nights. So, I continued attending that club for six school-years if you count that first one, 1993-1994. I finished the spring of 1999, I got a trophy for finishing all six years. I was then invited to attended this camp. That is when I met the youth group in Hillsboro, Oregon. That is when I would start attending the youth group.

Scholarship

This particular certificate was good for $300 and I received it for being in the choir, the large vocal group. We practiced during the school year and we entered the contest held at the camp. At the end of the week, on that Friday, we ended up winning first place that year. So, I got that Scholarship Grant which probably went towards paying for my first college at the Word Of Life Bible Institute which I attended from 2004-2006.

What Song?

I don't remember from the top of my head which song we sang that year. I sort of remember some of the songs we sang during some of those 5 years. I will have to go look that information up.

Off to Camp

2000-07-23 - Sunday - After Sunday School and the morning service at my then favorite church, HCBC, we enter the yellow school bus which we were renting out or borrowing. I think we rented it out. Each year, we took a bus to camp. Maybe even the same bus. A long bus and not a short bus. This was on Sunday, the 23rd day of July of 2000. If a school bus has around 30 rows and 4 seats per row, then that is a potential of 120 people plus the driver. But minus the luggage in the back rows. Some of the seats were empty. I don't know exactly how many rows. So, there may have less than 100 people including the children, teens, and the adults combined. We would stop every five hours or less. We would stop for meals. So, I enjoyed going to like Burger King or other fast food joints for dinner, breakfast, lunch. For Sunday, we may have stopped for only one meal, dinner. We probably had a potluck at the church before leaving. After dinner, we would sleep at this church somewhere near the bottom of Oregon. We had this same routine each of the five summers I attended.

First Day of Camp

2000-07-24 - Monday - We would wake up at that one church and drive off to eat breakfast at fast food restaurants or whatever. We would be told to stay in groups of two or more, not to wander off. We would stop near Mount Shasta for lunch. We would get camp in the afternoon. We would register that we were there and start moving into our cabins. We would have some free time to play carpet ball, volleyball, basketball, go-carts, swimming, slide, blob, snack bar, table tennis, etc. We would have an evening service where we sing. We played games. There would be a lesson. We would play some kind of big camp game at night after that. We would have some free time after that. We would have devotions in our cabins and go to bed. I may not have the exact order to all of these activities. But these were some of what we did each day.

Second Day of Camp

2000-07-25 - Tuesday - We had a special morning challenge which was optional. But you would have to wake up around 06:00 AM or 06:30 AM. We would do some exercises, games, challenges, for like thirty minutes. So, like pushups, jumping jacks, random things like that. One morning might be a pillow fight. Each morning would be something fun. Last morning would always be the polar bear swim where we would jump into the cold lake. After that, breakfast. After that, morning session of singing, a sermon or lesson, things like that. After that, a workshop or elective like class. After that, lunch and we also had the Teens Involved activities in the afternoon. We had free time in the afternoon. I enjoyed the go-carts and would ride them many times again and again. I would also play gutterball or carpetball. I also enjoyed volleyball. I didn't go into the lake a lot. We would have dinner, evening session, game, devotions, free time. This was the normal routine each day at camp.

Third Day of Camp

2000-07-26 - Wednesday - The third day was similar to the other days.

Fourth Day of Camp

2000-07-27 - Thursday - The fourth day was similar to the other days.

Fifth Day of Camp

2000-07-28 - Friday - But the fifth and last full day at camp was always the saddest in the sense of I would always have that feeling of how it was almost over and I started missing it already. I was always in Teens Involved each summer and we would receive certificates and awards for winning the competitions we had in Teens Involved. So, I mentioned the large group vocal competition which we got first place in that year. I would also do things like drama or puppets some of the years. I was even on the quiz team one school-year.

Back Home

2000-07-29 - Saturday - We get up, eat cereal with milk for breakfast around like 07:30 AM PST to 08:00 AM. We would be off around 09:00 AM in the bus heading back home. I'm not totally sure the exact time but after like 07:00 AM and totally before 10:00 AM. We would stop for lunch around Mount Shasta generally I think. We would stop later on for dinner like in Salem or like a few hours from home later on that day. We would be to the church around like 08:00 PM or 09:00 PM. I would be back in my house probably before 10:00 PM. This was the schedule we followed each year I attended from 1999 to 2003, we would always get home late on a Saturday, the last week or second to last week of July of each year. By the time I was on my 5th year at camp, I remember talking a bunch in the van ride back home that Saturday night. Ted Koelbl must have said something to the effect of how I was much more talkative than in previous years, a lot less shy. I was hyper and talking a blond girl reacting to the chatter all the youth in the van who were also being dropped off at home in like Cornelius and Forest Grove.