The World According To Chris Brewer

Memory #9: Kelso COGOP Brings Seven Youth To Senior Camp 2002

Senior Camp 2002 wasn’t only my last year as a camper, but I was also the interim youth leader at the COGOP in Kelso.

The Kelso COGOP was, and still is, a church with less than thirty members — but I gotta admit it had a lot of heart. Under the leadership of Pat Dillon as pastor, Kelso COGOP has plodded along through financial troubles, a dilapidated building and other adversities that have plagued it over the years.

The church there has never had a large youth group…in fact I think we had 15 one Wednesday night and that was a good service in terms of people showing up. But one thing we made sure to do was promote the heck out of Camp, and since my brother Jason and I were “lifers” at camp, we convinced a lot of our friends at the church to go.

The kids raised money every way you could think of, and the church did their best to help them out. Lo and behold, Kelso COGOP was able to send seven youth to camp, something they had never been able to do before. My brother, myself, Michael, Rinat, Herbie, Tessa and a friend of hers joined the fun at Senior Camp, and everyone ended up having such a great time.

I’ll never forget going to that Camp and seeing every one of the youth I went to church with letting down their guard, having fun, and receiving blessings from the Lord. Each one of them came back changed and it was so wonderful to see the Lord at work in their lives.

In a move to gain more visibility for my COGOP videos, I’ve started uploading videos to my YouTube channel. I’ll upload every video I shoot for church events to YouTube, since it’s easier to use than Brightcove and more people visit YouTube on a daily basis anyway.

The first video I’ve uploaded is a quick montage of the GenArise youth and young adult groups helping clean up Elizabeth Park in Washougal, in late April. Enjoy!

Take a drive down Interstate 84, pass 64th Avenue and you’ll see this billboard.

I obeyed it…I honked once. Then I honked 100 times for Spencer Hawes.

With Senior Camp being only 10 days away, I thought it would be a pretty fun idea to chronicle my ten favorite memories of COGOP summer camps each day until Senior Camp Day 1. Camps have had a profound influence on myself and many friends of mine, and over the next ten days I will be sharing my favorite experiences.

Here goes nothing…hope you enjoy it.

Memory #10: The 1999 Epic Field Hockey Game

If you participated in it or watched it, you definitely remember it. The Field Hockey Game of Senior Camp 1999 was an absolute battle between rival factions during Sportsmanship Club. You see, in Camps past each camper had to sign up for a “club” that would be conducted during the day that the camp offered…such as Sportsmanship, Hiking, Crafts, etc. The clubs lasted for one hour and made for some pretty good fun.

I chose the Sportsmanship club, which was led by Don Blumenthal. Each day we all played a variety of team sports with the emphasis on one major phrase, “Play hard, play strong…win with grace, lose with dignity.” We all tried our best to put it to practice, but in this particular epic matchup, grace and dignity were a bit hard to come by.

Every year without fail, Don Horton (a Washington camp legend) brought a field hockey set that he had bought at Goodwill and all the kids absolutely loved. We used it for this matchup on a hot summer day at Millersylvania for a battle that will go down in history.

The game lasted for a little over 45 minutes, and we all ran our butts up and down that field trying to punch the ball through the net to no avail. Don reffed a tight game that saw a lot of unintentional (I’m sure) body checking and high sticking…I think we saw a record number of players going to the “penalty box.” I sat out a couple times myself.

The game was a seesaw battle, with each of us taking our best shots and the goalies repelling each one like they had the fire of God in them, or maybe they just had a willpower to be called the next Camp Champions. I remember firing a slapshot that knocked some kid named Kyle in the back of the head…everyone said it would have been a goal otherwise as the goalie had fallen down and the net was open. At a great personal expense, Kyle saved the game for his team — we’ll get back to this Kyle guy later.

I fell over someone’s stick and gashed my leg pretty good, BUT I KEPT GOING. No way you quit in a matchup like this. A game of pure fun, all for pride…you can’t give up. And neither team did for 45 minutes…usually Camp games of hockey were pretty high scoring, but this one was brutal. Running up and down the field, and some great defense being played.

Back to Kyle. He became the hero of the game by shoving off one of my teammates and rifling it past our goalie in extra time for the win. Pretty good shot it was, but it was the other team’s and we had lost 1-0.

After the game we all ate lunch and went to class, but we had drawn a pretty decent crowd for the end of the game and talk of the game ended up buzzing through the camp for the rest of the day. Later that day we saw a record number of players on the pitch for some great hockey action.

And you better believe I got back out there.

In just a short time, Joel Gibby and I will be heading to Banks, Oregon, to bike the Banks-Vernonia Linear Trail. Over forty miles of riding, oughta be fun. I’m taking my camera so expect some photos.

Be sure to check back tonight, when I post photos from the bike ride. Also I will share my top 10 Camp memories in a series every day from today until camp starts. TEN MORE DAYS TO GO!!!

Over the past week, I’ve been praying about an upcoming event that New Horizons’ youth and young adult groups plan on participating in within a couple of weeks.

Let me set a background…NH purchased the former Washougal School District office last year and has since been unable to occupy it, because of what I am told are violations of building and fire code. Because of this, many members of NH are upset and frustrated that they don’t have a building to call their own, and they feel they are being unfairly targeted by the city of Washougal. The general response I get when I talk to anyone at NH about the situation is that God wants them at the corner of 25th & A Street…it’s a “strategic location” being so close to downtown and all.

That being said, the big thing the church folks are planning to do within the next couple weeks is a “Jericho March” throughout the streets of Washougal.

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This week we’ll take a look at a couple tracks from the Swedish House Mafia, a group consisting of Eric Prydz, Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso. Also another Lifelike track in there as well, for the second consecutive week.

5. “Proper Education,” Eric Prydz vs. Floyd. From the Proper Education single.

I always loved the original track “Another Brick In The Wall” by Pink Floyd, and I think Eric Prydz has done an awesome job of remixing it. A classic.

4. “Running Out,” Lifelike. From a 20000ST Records compilation.

Great 80s-ish sounding track. Can you tell by the past 54321s that I have a soft spot for the 80s?

3. “Feel the Vibe,” Axwell. From the Feel the Vibe EP.

I fell in love with this song in late 2004 as I was getting ready to move from Portugal back to the U.S. Nice beat, nice chorus and I really like the vocal synth in the main section of the song.

2. “Another Chance,” Roger Sanchez. From the album First Contact.

The Toto sample in this song is instantly recognizable…Roger Sanchez took this track and turned it into a dancefloor killer back in 2001. Today, in 2007, I’m still jamming to it.

1. “My Friend Dario,” Vitalic. From the album OK Cowboy.

I actually like the video more than the song. Sorry the girls are scantily clad, but the concept of them in football helmets and the guys on air guitar is classic.

I couldn’t use the term girl-who-shall-remain-nameless in the title of a post, so I decided to blank her name out like a swear word.

Anyhoo, this is some pretty sad news: apparently a female professor down at OSU ingested a nasty chemical substance, and ended up dying from it. What makes it even more interesting is the woman was a professor in the Rock and Soil Department, and last time I had spoken to the girl-who-shall-remain-nameless, she was taking a soil class.

The OregonLive.com article I linked to said that authorities responded to the prof “gravely ill” in her car at 35th and Campus Way. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the parking lot I used to park at when I would waste my time visiting A@!(% at school.

I wonder if A%&@# knew her. I wouldn’t feel bad for her under any other circumstance, but hey, if she lost a prof then that’s gotta be some gnarly stuff to be going through. I won’t bank on hearing back from her on whether that was her prof or not, so I won’t speculate either way.

In other tragic news today the Oregon State baseball team made it back to the College World Series. F.

After figuring out last night what I’m going to need for Camp (as far as multimedia goes, since I will be taking pictures and video), I came up with the following:

All this in addition to what I will be bringing to Camp as a Group Leader in training, and I want to shoot upwards of ten hours of video so I can edit a full-length video on Senior Camp 2007. I also plan on shooting about 1,000 or so photos.

If I get an opportunity to do so, I’d love to shoot photos of every cabin group along with their group leader, somewhat like a yearbook.

I’m REALLY pumped about Senior Camp, and it’s time to REALLY start getting ready for it…Camp is in 13 days.

Also before I close this post out I would like to let folks from New Horizons know that I am holding a prayer meeting and camp-out at my apartment the night before Camp starts, Saturday, June 23, around 7. If you’re from the GenArise Youth/Young Adults group, you’re invited. I’ll try to post more info soon.

For now, I’m off to work. God bless!

So it turns out the guy who “won” my eBay auction for my laptop was a scammer and subsequently kicked off the wonderful world of online auctions. What a @#($%. I thought I had my laptop sold and was the happiest man on the planet until I received an email from eBay telling me that my product had not sold due to unauthorized activity from the bidder. I promptly put my PowerBook back on eBay and the auction is still going on as we speak. Heck, you might even want to bid.

I want to know why the American media, specifically cable news channels, were all over the story of Paris Hilton going back to jail and even went so far as to call it “breaking news”??? I’m honestly repulsed. Paris Hilton is a spoiled brat (I’m saying this very nicely) who thinks she is above the law, and someone finally put her in her place. It’s good to see, but it doesn’t deserve half the media attention it gets.

Although I do have to admit, if the cameras weren’t rolling, they definitely wouldn’t have captured the photo to the left. I hate to revel in someone else’s bad fortune, but hey, the woman got what she deserved. I just want to know why society nowadays treats celebrities — everything from movie stars to sports figures — like they are above the law, and they’re larger than life???

I don’t know why that irks me so bad, it just does.

Oh well…onto some good news. Tonight I talked with Joel Gibby and we’re both going to ride our bikes down the Banks-Vernonia Linear Park trail this Thursday, hopefully. THAT’s going to be fun. 21 miles each way, and I’m gonna snap some cool photos. I hear the trail goes over an old train trestle so that’s gonna definitely be fun to ride. Better not run into any horse turds though.

On a final note, I would like to thank Dan and Mireya Browning for stopping by the Apple Store on Friday. Officially they are the very first people from New Horizons Church to visit me down in Hillsboro, Oregon. They were on their way to the coast so they decided to stop by and say hey…it was a fun little visit and provided a big boost to my Friday.

And that’s it for tonight…I work until 6 tomorrow night and I’m gonna take the opportunity to shout at you then. Peace and God bless.