Sports Camp Rules!

Our church has two big summer outreach ministries to the community: Focus Sports Camp and Vacation Bible School (VBS). I do both and Gerard usually does VBS but decided to try sports camp last week and liked it.

We were both in the basketball group--I had first grade boys with two teen coaches and Gerard coached 5th grade boys with three other coaches and two blue shirt workers. (The blue shirt workers escort children to the restroom and assist with keeping order, checking kids in and out, giving out the daily gifts.)  The last two years I was on flag football and this is the first year I did the devotions one day.  It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.

We did basic fundamental basketball drills with the kids: dribbling, foul shooting, lay ups, defense and their favorite shooting game--knockout. We both enjoyed seeing how good the boys were and surprised at how bad and slow we are. This year at the evening picnic for the whole family, we had a jump rope competition team perform that was very entertaining and each camper got a free jump rope.

The only thing Gerard liked better about VBS was the snacks. At VBS we get two homemade cookies every day  and at sports camp just vending machine type snacks--no comparison! In spite of this, Gerard is planning on doing sports camp again next year. If you are wondering why he doesn't do both, it's because he only gets three weeks of vacation, one which he must take between Christmas and New Year's Day. Since he wants one week for himself free to do whatever, he must make a choice as to which ministry to help with.

This video will give you some idea of what it was like:

About 800 children attended--500 in the morning and 300 in the afternoon!  It was so much fun to see them come back Thursday evening with their parents for the picnic.  It takes many volunteers to pull this off and the fact that we have so many people willing to give of themselves to do this is one of the reasons we love being a part of Parma Heights Baptist Church.

Are you involved in any church ministries? If so, we'd love to hear about it. 

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