NORMAN — This week, the children of Norman were busy putting the wild back in Wildwood Community Church.
And they had several opportunities to get wild, too. With water slides, a climbing wall, laser tag and many other activities, there was little time to be bored during Pine Cove Base Camp.
The camp, based out of Tyler, Texas, was in Norman this week. For more than 40 years, Pine Cove has been offering a Christian-based day camp that is ran by college students hired by the organization. Last year, the camp started a pilot program where it traveled to different cities to allow children the opportunity to have fun while learning about God.
“What was happening was there were so many college students that were capable of serving that they (Pine Cove) didn’t have enough places,” Wildwood Community Church Children’s Pastor Brian Hayes said. “Pine Cove had contacted us back in October and asked us to consider this. I was weighing the difference between doing a vacation Bible school or something else. There are a number of awesome vacation Bible schools in our community and that’s great, because they serve our community in an awesome way, this is just something different.”
With 92 kids at the high-engergy camp, Hayes is already pinning down the date for next year’s visit from Pine Cove.
“I call it VBS on steroids,” Hayes said.
The camp started Monday and will conclude today. Each day when kids participating in the camp arrive, they are greeted by camp counselors in the church’s parking lot doing cheers for the kids coming in.
“I had a mom call me on the phone yesterday and she was just crying. She said ‘I can’t believe these college kids love the kids that much and love Jesus that much, but it shows.’ And she said, ‘We were wondering if we could afford or rather if we made the right decision in coming, but after seeing how excited the kids were after the first day and seeing how they welcomed us in, we know we made the right decision,’” Hayes said.
Pine Cove’s stop at Wildwood Community Church is the only one in Oklahoma this year.
“I really have tried to partner with churches. This is not something we are saying is just for our kids. The primary emphasis we are doing here at Wildwood is outreach. If we could partner with other churches and allow them to branch out to the people they know, and point them to this event. We’re not trying to pat our chest and say, ‘Hey, look what we got.’ We are just excited about getting the gospel out to Norman,” Hayes said.
Honor Sagebiel, 10, of Norman enjoyed her week at Pine Cove. Her favorite activity all week was sliding down the massive inflatable water slide that was set up outside the church.
Also enjoying the camp was 9-year-old Anna Abernethy of Norman. She enjoyed the inflatable obstacle course where her and her new friends would play games.
“The things where there are rubber band and you get to jump on the trampoline,” which some might call bungee jumping, was Hannah Knehans, 10, of Norman’s favorite activity this week.
Will Bracken, 5, has enjoyed going down the water slide, too, and worshiping. Plus he made a new friend.
“Actually, two. Actually, three,” Bracken said.
Shana Adkisson 366-3544 sadkisson@normantranscript.com
