Seasoned Camper: (2004) 

For the fourth year running, I went to the diocesan children’s camp in north Norfolk. As always I had a fantastic time. There was a wide range of activities, including team games, trips to nearby places (Wells and Walsingham), going to the beach and a treasure hunt. 
    The children all sleep under canvas. Every tent chooses a name, this year my tent was called ‘Muffin’. Over the two weeks there is a competition between the tents to get as many points as possible. Points are awarded for tidying tents, winning competitions and generally being useful. This year our tent made it to third place. 
    Every day there is morning and evening prayers, and at the weekend Vespers on Saturday followed by the Liturgy on Sunday. We also have lessons every day, led by Father Stephen and Oxford theologian Matthew Steenberg*. We had a Panikhida for the first anniversary of Bishop Anthony’s death and a Moleben for the camp feast of St. Seraphim in the chapel dedicated to him in Walsingham. 
    After dinner we have other activities, and my two favourite have to be camp fire and discos. We all sit round the camp fire, snuggled into blankets if you want to, and sing songs, tell ghost stories and jokes. Later on we drink hot chocolate and toast marshmallows. 
    Every year on camp there is a theme day where each tent has to dress up according to the theme and prepare a short sketch, which is judged. This year the theme was ‘underwater’. ‘Muffin’ came first with a sketch about ‘The Turtle who had no Shell’. 
    To make the camp run smoothly there are 6 leaders who organise the activities, prepare entertainments, judge how tidy the tents are, and during the camp version of ‘Blind Date’ had everyone in stitches, especially mad Irishman Alexis who can take on any role he wants to. 
    This camp is an excellent opportunity to meet new friends and see old ones. I would recommend it to anyone who is thinking of coming. See you next year!
 __________________
*Now Hieromonk Irenei. See below for his account of the camp.

Regular Youth Leader: (2004)

The Diocese's summer camp in Norfolk ran from 24th July to 4th August, and, as in years previous, was a mixture of excitement and energy, solitude and community. Solitude in the form of the camp’s seaside retreat at a farm near the small village of Burnham Deepdale, outside of King’s Lynn; community in the form of nearly 40 campers who, together with a small team of leaders and dedicated supporters, spent the better part of a fortnight living in close quarters and sharing in a unique form of the Christian life. 
    The centrality of the Feast of the Transfiguration to previous camp summers was displaced this year by the calendar, and instead the strong love for St Seraphim of Sarov among both the campers and the leaders stood at the centre of the worshipping heart of the camp. The general theme of the lessons each day was ‘The Saints’ (though, discussions among the Church’s youth being what they are, nearly every imaginable topic fits beneath this umbrella); and at the feast of St Seraphim on the second Sunday of camp, his memory was kept in a barn-chapel Liturgy, as well as a molieben at the Church of St Seraphim in Little Walsingham. Last year the camp kept the centenary of Seraphim’s canonisation, and a great number of young voices needed little prompting to sing again ‘We venerate thee, O holy Father Seraphim…’ as they had then. 
    Amidst prayers and discussions on matters of faith and life, camp is filled too with all the summer goings-on one expects. Visits to the seaside occurred almost daily—save for one afternoon when the arrival en masse of countless hover flies swarmed our group on the beach and forced a quick retreat (more than one camper drawing the obvious parallel to the plague of locusts recounted of the Exodus). The ‘Big Walk’ again marked the midpoint of camp, leading campers through several miles of Norfolk coastal flats to sand dunes and yet another beach, where this year a seal was spotted in close proximity. Theme days, song contests, tent decorating competitions, lunchtime readings from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, camp Olympics, barbeques in the sunshine, discos, campfires, parachute games, ceramics painting, tie-dying, prosphora baking—the list of activities goes on and on. And in all these, a constant mingling of ‘fun-and-games’ with the prayerful life of the Church resounded. Morning and evening prayers each day were sung without a choir, all the children joining in the offering. And at the fortnight’s end, a memorial for the Metropolitan kept on the anniversary of his falling asleep, which, exactly one year earlier, we had kept at camp only moments after his repose. 
    There are many ways to look at a diocesan summer camp, of which ours in Norfolk is only one of two. It is a social time, when children and young people of a common heritage come together among friends for a much needed break from the routine of their everyday lives. It is also an immensely important ‘missionary time’ in the life of the Diocese, for more than a few of those who attend our camps encounter, in those twelve days, the majority of their ‘church time’ for the year. But for me it is also a supremely hopeful time. Amidst these children of various ages, of various backgrounds, of various languages and various maturities, lies the future of the Church. Children are children, and so this future disguises itself among jokes, pranks, frustrations, confusion and often simple laughter; but it is an honest, unimpeded look at the children of God and a rare, and encouragingly joyful, glimpse at our Diocese a generation into the future.

Adult helper: (2008)

This year was my first time at St. Seraphim Orthodox Youth Camp and I spent a week in the kitchen helping to prepare meals. I was surprised at the relaxed, steady flow of each day and the flexible adjusting to unexpected events. Everyone seemed to know what they had to do and simply did it!
    After prayers and breakfast, the day's camp leader (drawn from a group of wonderful Orthodox twenty-somethings) would be greeted warmly and noisily before he or she outlined the day's schedule. Children experienced the discipline of tent inspection and helped to lay tables or clear and wash up after meals. Later the camp leader would allocate points to each tent team,
    My impression is that the camp is an emotionally and spiritually rich experience that children will remember all their lives. They have a rare opportunity - the freedom to hang out with friends for two weeks, sharing responsibility for the domestic sides of things, playing, learning and praying side by side in an Orthodox setting.
    Maybe adults could do with some of that too!