I can’t believe yesterday evening was the last night of HEROES 2013!  I apologize for not writing sooner.  I blinked when I go home last night and think I experienced a time warp as it is now much later! Actually, it isn’t even much later.  It is tomorrow which I guess is really today, but….  Maybe???   Did anyone else have that happen?

Well, how do you think things went with our superheroes of the LORRGG? I am incredibly thankful that Mr. Invisible escaped and that Rock Solid was strong enough to CRUSH the purple Stone of Rosetta. Now, it can no longer be used for the evil purposes of Dr. Vonevilville. Almost better than the saving of Metro City and the world, I think is the fact that Rick the Henchman learned that crime doesn’t pay and was befriended by our superheroes.

Speaking of saving the world…. Pastor Craig did take a serious moment to tell us about how Jesus, God’s son, came to save us from our sins so we can have a right relationship with Him. It is truly super powerful stuff. What did you think about what he said? Did you know that everyone is a sinner and needs to repent and accept Jesus? Without Jesus we will always be apart from God, and this was never what He wanted for us. God wants the best for His children, and loves us SO much that Jesus came to make a way for us. I know HEROES is over, but if you have questions about this, please find someone to talk with about it. Anyone at Forest Hills Baptist Church would love to have a conversation with you. The website is http://fhbcgr.org/ if you would like to get in contact with someone or even just to check out what else goes on here when superheroes and villains aren’t flying about.

Speaking of villains…. Could you believe that the Kevinator returned and stole the cookies of the Flying Hawaiians? The Little Old Lady had brought them especially to our SuperDuo for helping her this week. Wow. It is not the ending I expected. Maybe you can stay on the lookout for the Kevinator and talk to him about how he treated our poor SuperDuo. The Kevinator needs to know that stealing is wrong!

We really hope you enjoyed your week because we certainly enjoyed having you. Below are some pictures from our last evening together. Did you get to go do the Slip-n-Slide? It is a Base Camp tradition! Have a great rest of the summer! We hope you’ll join us for other fun stuff at Forest Hills Baptist Church as well as come back again next year for Base Camp 2014!

Wow! I can hardly believe we learned about our last letter and that our week is almost over. Tomorrow we wrap things up with a night of family fun. We hope you are planning on joining us for a time of sharing what we learned, a hotdog dinner, inflatables, and the awesome Base Camp slip-n-slide! Before we head into our last night of HEROES tomorrow, let’s think about tonight….

H-E-R-O spells hero, and we’ve learned a word for each letter while talking about heroes of the Bible. “O” is our final letter. Do you remember what word goes with it? I actually heard two words attached to it. They were Overcome and Obedience. (I’m not sure if one, the other, or both is the ‘official’ answer! Do you know?) Like the hero we learned about tonight, though, we have to overcome our disbelief in order to have a right relationship with Jesus. Once we have that relationship, we seek to be obedient.

Our oldest campers talked about how our hero was actually the brother of Jesus, and he didn’t believe that Jesus was God’s son until after Jesus died and rose again. Once he realized who Jesus really was and his own need for a savior, he repented, accepted Jesus as his savior, received God’s forgiveness, and (like all our heroes) was committed to God. During the discussion, Mr. Scott made the point that just because someone goes to church doesn’t make them a Christian. A true Christian has a relationship with Jesus and tries to exhibit those H-E-R-O words. I say try because it isn’t always easy, and Christians do make mistakes. It is also a process of growing and learning, just like we have done this week. It is a lot to take in! If you have questions, please don’t be afraid to ask. There is no such thing as a silly question. Even if you do know Jesus, sometimes you still may have questions and that is okay too!

Outside of our learning time, we continued games and our hero escapades. I was also very relieved that our snack heroes were all okay and that the Kevinator did not get all the snacks! Back to the heroes….

The LORRGG continues to fight against Dr. Vonevilville but also continues to face problems. Not only did our super villain steal another Stone of Rosetta, he has also managed to capture Mr. Invisible. This is quite a feat since even our really, really, good guys have trouble locating their friend. I wonder how he did it? I sure hope our heroes can rescue Mr. Invisible tomorrow and stop the theft of the last Stone of Rosetta or the world (and us) is in real trouble!

At the end of the night, our Hawaiian SuperDuo crashed into the billboard of Our Little Old Lady and destroyed it. She was less than happy with them as she had been coming to paint it. It also sounded like you all were less than happy with our SuperDuo when they didn’t fix it; however, they did take their task of going after the Kevinator quite seriously. It landed them in a watery situation, and the Kevinator stopped by to chat with us. He seemed to have enjoyed the snacks he stole, and does not seem to think he has much to worry about from our Duo. It is another situation where we will have to wait and see….

Seems like they need to wrap both of these situations up at our Family Fun Night or we may just have to continue Base Camp! What do you think? I mean, I can’t wait a whole year to find out what happens…. Can you?

Until we meet again, I have used my superpower of freezing time to share a few moments from our evening below. Let your family know what you have learned and don’t forget they are to come along Thursday evening for the fun! (Plus, bring appropriate clothes and a towel!)

Like our other nights, we began our evening enjoying some singing and dancing. MEANWHILE, though, we learned that Dr. Vonevilville was attempting to obtain yet another Stone of Rosetta to power his device. This stone, however, was being guarded by the ferocious and brave, Tank. Our LORRGG superheroes, quickly realized that despite Tank’s abilities, he was in danger. This time it was Ms. Freeze who leapt to the rescue. She saved Tank, but another stone is in the hands of our villain. It REALLY doesn’t look good….

All super silliness aside, we headed to teaching time and learned about our third letter of the week. It is the letter “R” which stands for Radical. Do you remember what radical means? Share it or an example of being radical with someone you know. This now gives us 3 letters “H” for humble, “E” for empowered, and “R” for radical. One of our classes realized that we have now spelled the word HER. This is interesting because tonight our heroes were women. These women showed that they were radically generous, faithful, courageous, grateful, and proclaimed God’s Truth. Does this sound like any of the other heroes we have talked about this week? Do you remember for what our heroes were grateful? They were grateful that Jesus loves us so much that He came to die for our sins, and they showed this by proclaiming it to others. What do you think about that? It is something we all need to know.

After learning about the letter “R” we headed to small groups and then out for some fun wiggle time. Once again, the games looked amazing. Some of us (including me) even got a bit wet…. I guess that is what happens when water and fun are involved. Did you get wet?

The end or our evening involved more time with our SuperDuo. Tonight they attempted to rescue our poor snack hero from someone stealing our snacks! It looked like a little old lady at first but really seems to be a super villain in disguise. The powers of our SuperDuo seemed to be no match against him, and they are now in a sticky situation….

We hope you will join us again for more fun and learning, and if you missed tonight, the Invisacoon apparently rescued the Little Old Lady’s cat while we were sleeping last night.

Don’t forget that Thursday is our Family Night of Fun with a free hot dog cookout and outdoor activities. Returning campers will tell you about the super fun slip-n-slide. Bring appropriate clothes and a towel! See you tomorrow!

Heroes are adventurous, and today was a great beginning to our week of adventure! We started off our evening with some song and an introduction to the League of Really Really Good Guys and their quest to stop Dr. Evil Vonevilville. I was so relieved when Mr. Fuzzy Bear was rescued. Do you think our superheroes will be able to stop our villain from getting all the Rosetta Stones? We will have to wait and see.

While it is lots of fun to talk about superheroes with special powers and even imagine having our own, during our teaching time we talked about a real hero in the Bible. Do you remember his name? If you said John the Baptist, you are quite right. We learned a lot about his life and how he lived. Can you share some things about his life with your family? Where did he live? What did he eat? How about, did God have purpose for his life? What was it? Seems like a lot of questions, but I know that you all are good listeners! We ended talking about the letter “H”. “H” stands for humble or humility. John the Baptist was very humble. His goal was to point to Jesus rather than himself.

Game time was a different adventure for everyone depending on age. It was filled with obstacles, relays, superheroes, and the desperate need to avoid touching the kryptonite but get it where it needed to go! Check out some of our fun!

The evening ended with our Hawaiian SuperDuo literally flying in! I don’t think I have ever seen that happen at Base Camp before! As a SuperDuo, their goal was to help someone. How do you think that went? I’m not sure the little old lady was any better off after their help than when they started.

We really hope you enjoyed our first day of HEROES and are excited to come back Monday evening! There is still time to invite friends to join us in the fun! Check out some more pictures below of our adventurous time together.

Before I go, if you participated in our contest, here are the answers to a few of the questions….
Who resuscitated Jimmy the Raccoon in HUGE? Pastor Craig
Who rescued our islanders in FOUND? Moshia – and he was not what we expected!
Who went back in time to help rescue Scoop in QUEST? Jimmy the Raccoon

Less than a week away until our adventure begins! This year’s theme is ‘Heroes.’ What do you think it means to be a hero? Have you ever wanted to be a hero? When I think of heroes, I think of a couple of different kinds. The first is a superhero – you know, like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman….. I’m sure you can think of some. (I have to confess that one of my favorite heroes these days is Po from Kung Fu Panda. He can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he does save the day and is pretty cool. I know Po never thought he would be a hero!) The other type of hero I think of are people like firefighters and policemen. They rush into dangerous situations when everyone else is running the other way. Who do you think of when you hear the word hero?

According to the dictionary, a hero can be the following:
1 a: a mythological or legendary figure endowed with great strength or ability
b: an illustrious warrior
c: a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities
d: one who shows great courage

It can also be another name for a submarine sandwich, but I don’t think that is what we are going to be talking about this week. I guess you never know, though. I can imagine Mr. Luke and Pastor Craig getting pretty hungry during their antics and ordering a hero sandwich!

I hope that we are going to have many returning friends this year as well as many new! To get us started, I have some questions for you to think about and answer. The first person to answer from each grade group (6th/7th grade is combined) will get a special surprise the first night. To participate, click on the spot ‘leave a comment.’ (Okay this with mom or dad first!). Enter only your 1st name and grade. Answer one of the questions below. Remember – heroes are trustworthy, so don’t look at the answers of anyone else until you post your own!

CONTEST
If you are a RETURNING camper,
* Name one or more of the heroes from past years like one of these:
– Who resuscitated Jimmy the Raccoon during HUGE after his watery encounter?
– Who rescued our islanders last year during FOUND?  (If you can’t remember the name, tell us how he rescued the islanders and/or did he look like how you would expect a hero to be…)
– Name one of the good kings we learned about in QUEST? (I think they could count as heroes….)
– Who went back in time to help rescue Scoop during QUEST?
(Be sure to tell me what hero instance to which you are referring!)

If you are a NEW camper or in grades kindergarten to 2nd,
* Name someone you think is a hero and why OR
* Tell us what kind of super power you would want to have.

Thanks! Can’t wait to read all your answers and see you on Sunday!
Don’t forget to preregister here to help us prepare and start on time: http://basecamp.fhbcgr.org/online-registration/