Campo Aposento Alto: Overview

The members of Iglesia Parkway

As I was flying to Bogota I was messaging one of the members of Iglesia parkway and he asked if I would be interested in going to a camp the following weekend. Not knowing what to expect, but ready to help in anyway possible, I said I would go. I quickly followed up with some questions, I had agreed to attend before I even knew if I would be helping or participating. As it turned out it was a camp for young adults, roughly 18-30 years old. This camp was put on by, and for, Aposento Alto (a family of churches we are a part of here in Bogota).

We left early Thursday morning and loaded onto buses, the camp was in Chinauta, a two hour drive outside of Bogota. Colombia is right on the equator so there are no seasons here, it's hot all of the time. Bogota however, is in the mountains at an elevation of 8,675 feet, which means that the temperature sits between 50-60 F all year long. The advantage of this is that you can go from 55 F to 90 F by simply driving a few hours down the mountain.

There were 150 - 200 people that attended the camp, they wanted the people from different churches to interact so they divided everyone into different teams and did there best to mix people as much as possible. These teams were used for playing games and in activities where we earned points to compete against the other teams. My team was the "Artesanos" (or the "Artisans"), some of the other teams were the "Pescadores", "Soldados", "Jueces" and "Carpinteros". We were also divided into different groups for bedrooms.

Each day we woke up, sang a few songs as a large group, then split for devotionals with our room. The sermons and devotionals were all on the book of Haggai, which was the focus of the camp.

I met a lot of people and spoke a ridiculous amount of Spanish. At one point someone I tried to help someone practice their English and it sounded weird coming out of my mouth. That was weird, and definitely a first.

The camp overall was pretty fun. It was very well planned and executed. They kept us fairly busy but still managed to have some planned free time. Not surprisingly my experience and the experience of one of the Colombians at the camp were completely different. As it turns out it is a lot harder to make friends and just hang out when it's not your native language. *Gasp, No. Way. Are you serious? Wow, I would have never guessed!*

Oh yah, and I almost forgot. The day we got home 80+ people from the camp got pretty sick with food poisoning. Not fun.

Iglesia Parkway meeting on the last day