"When the priests blew the…Vuvuzelas?"

Monday officially starts the first day of Mt. Zion Baptist Camp.  A LOT of planning goes into every detail of this last week of June.  Today, we had our big camp work day to set up and prepare for everyone to come at 10:00 Monday morning.  This year, about 50 workers and 120+ campers plan on being here.  The thing is: we do everything.  Dozens of people from our church put hours upon hours into preparing the stage, purchasing and planning for meals, keeping the campground clean, and all of the logistics involved.  In the end, though, it is very rewarding.

Our speakers this year are Pastor Aaron Samples for the teens and Pastor Chad Delhotal for the juniors.  The theme for this year is “The Jericho Project: Mission Impossible.”  Our spiritual focus is on hidden sin and victory against all odds.  For the program, the theme is all about espionage.  The campers are divided into four teams, and each given an ID badge and handle.  The main competition for those teams is who can knock down their wall by various things like accomplishing secret missions, doing well in Bible quizzing, and being victorious in field competitions throughout the day.  Whoever gets the most points for the day gets to have their wall (about 30 painted cardboard boxes) knocked down.

However, in the Bible’s account of the victory at Jericho, we know how it was accomplished.  By marching around the city 13 times over seven days, then as the finale, the priests blowing their ram horns and the people shouting with all of their might.  So, in the year of the 2010, also the year of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa, what do we use as improvisation for the hard-to-find ram horn?  Nothing but the infamous vuvuzela!  If you don’t know what that is, just Google it!  Let’s just say it is a fad that every spectator at the games love, but everyone watching them absolutely hate!  Yes, whichever team wins the day’s competition gets to blow their vuvuzelas and shout, so the walls of Jericho come tumbling down…

The funniest part about all of this is that they were purchased before the whole World Cup thing.  One of our church members had the idea of buying these big, cheap, plastic horns; and we went ahead and got them; unknowing of the phenomenon they would be in just a few weeks.  So, as most of you will be sitting at home sometime next week at about 7:00pm EST, be assured that the walls of Jericho will be tumbling down in Hannover, PA to the sound of vuvuzelas and a bunch of screaming teenagers.