Barbarian Camp

So I directed a boys outcamp recently at Crow with my friend Caleb Davidson. I wrote up a summary for my friends, and it ended up in the church bulletin.. so here it is again, this time with spell-check and comments so it looks less like it was written by a moron. Again, not directly related to Africa, but I've had lots of questions about Outcamp.


Hey Everyone! Thanks to all those who offered up prayers for us at Barbarian camp. I am pleased to say it went well. I have never in my life heard to many prayers for safety, and apparently they worked, since we had no injuries except for cuts and bruises.

Some highlights of the week: Boys (11-13) just being boys and, in some instances, young men. My theory was correct.. that is, given the chance, boys will gladly burp and fart and cover themselves with mud and eat without utensils and generally be deliriously filthy. Oh, and they love to hack things, we had machetes and axes going non-stop for days. For us older people there was a chain saw! The kids certainly had an enjoyable time. In addition to the straight-up fun of being a filthy savage, I think many of them learned team work and mental and phyiscal toughness. Some of these kids have never been told to "tape it up and go back in" once they scrape their knee, but I think every little boy wants the chance to be tough.

We built a sauna (supposedly the hottest one ever at outcamp), a fighting log in the river, a "chair of highest honor" covered in animal skins, and spent hours making things from wood. Many thanks to my co-director Caleb, who can make just about anything.

Trial, Trial, Trail! Discipline was handled with trials and those found (inevitably) guilty were given the X of Shame, the Rock of Shame (carrying a huge rock in a backpack) or the Dunk of
Shame (jumping into cold water). The kids loved it, so much we eventually had to discontinue the trials and just hand out pushups and chores on the rare occasion it was necessary- the kids were pretty good.

Warfare! We had numerous fighting games, including the "epic battle" on the playing field (fighting with pantyhose filled with flour), jousting matches on logs, wrestling (freestyle and sumo), boxing and sword fighting. Rules of combat were always the same, and the kids chanted them entusiastically.. "No FACE, No GROIN!" (these are the boys parts the kids are not allowed to hit). Oh, and the kids tried to kill a deer with an axe... didn't get anywhere near it, of course, but i got pretty nervous when the savages started chasing cows. I had visions of explaining to a farmer why Bessie had a hatchet stuck in her skull. Those kids were pretty hard core by the end of the week.. we had a "training session" where they lined up and we threw sponges at them for them to block with their shields and they absolutely loved it.

Capture the Woman... we hope that this one will go down in camp histoiry.. it's something that hasn't been done much... our entire outcamp took the bus back into main camp (about 100 people there), painted in war paint, wielding shield and screaming endless war chants. We kidnapped the Program Director of main camp (with her full knowledge and participation) and her campers (who incidentally were at Superhero camp) had to come rescue her. We barricaded a cabin door with nets and shield walls and waged all out medieval style warfare, with water balooons, sponges and socks filled with flour flying everywhere... though the woman was eventaully rescued, the 25 of us put up a great show for over half an hour.. apparently the fearlessness of the barbarian horde and our shield training had worked. Other, experienced staff members told me that they had never seen an entire camp so entusiastic about a game. We couldn't even play a second time for fear of actual war breaking out!

The spiritual side of camp was handled by our speaker, the very barbaric 300 lb Perc Denam, who spoke on different men in the Bible, most of them warriors, who were used by God. He reminded us that, as Christians we are "barbarians"- strangers in a strange land.. and encouraged the kids to make their days count, do somethggn with their lives, like the barbarians of old who wanted to go out on their shield rather than live out their days doing nothing. The messages were pretty good, though I wish we (the program directors) had planned time and devotional materials for the messages better, and given more time for the kids to reflect. Hopefully God spoke to the kdis in spite of our imperfect presentation. Anyway, that was Barbarian camp, I loved it, I'm sorry its over, and maybe someday we can do something like that again.