No BS- Power UP and Reach, a reaction from the editor

BSDAS Participants

Some of the delegates of our school had bittersweet feelings after the Luzon-wide camporee the NPUC hosted in the Adventist University of the Philippines. A good example would be the core commander of our pathfinder club BSDAS Royale, Miguel Adawan. “The camporee was well, bitin. It was fun because of the activities and the wonderful shake (that is available in the University Canteen) but on the other hand, it was also pretty sad, after all, I wasn’t able to make many friends,” is his comment when I asked him how he felt about the event.

The theme “Power UP and Reach” is very pathfinder-ish, don’t you think? It’s about leaders and what leaders are made of and do, they “Power UP”- develop themselves through God’s help, then they “Reach”- making progress by leading other people and making a difference in their lives. Pathfinders are those who are pilgrims looking for the right way to Christ. Speaking of which, our school sent 52 Pathfinders to the event, the only reason a limit was set was because of the bus was only able to accommodate this many passengers.

The pathfinders arrived at AUP before the sun was up during the morning of October 21, 2013. Immediately, the campers were made to set camp up in the Camping Area of AUP, an area near the Chrysanthemum Hall. As soon as camp was set up, the heat also went up, resulting to a group of strangely sweating campers. It was mostly free time until noon, when all the campers paraded to the grand stand in the soccer field. It was an amazing sight, that formation; there were so many Pathfinders there, it was estimated that there were 1600 pathfinders coming from 13 academies throughout the union! Of course, the sun was up but then, a few trees saved the cool-weather-loving campers we sent. It was because of fear of embarrassment, maybe, that made our campers stand so still in that formation that our Club Director Mr. Dary G. Fabito even said, “You guys looked like pillars out there, I’m proud of you.”

The following days, the campers were split up into different activities, honors, swimming (nobody from our school could join), games & recreation, orienteering and other activities like marching and drilling, knot tying, semaphore signaling, monkey bridge and tower building, Bible quiz and play for points. The schedule was really fun; everybody got the chance to move their bodies at most of the activities and also in the process, make friends.

“I really enjoyed the event Games & Recreation because it was where we were able to get to know campers from other schools and play with them, testing our unity and ability to cooperate,” Jaspearl Capuyan said.
Many of the other activities were also enjoyed by our campers; Miguel Adawan said he really liked the marching and drilling activity because he learned a lot from it.

Camporees are events that only come every four years, some people completely miss out on it because of the four year gap between the events. Mr. Wayne Valera, a teacher in our school said that not joining a camporee would be similar to missing out on half of high school. That’s why it would be great if people would join this kind of events.

Although bitin, the camporee was fun. I just hope that the campers were able to absorb the true goal of the event, which was to create God-loving leaders. So to all pathfinders out there, remember to Power UP and Reach.


Kent Irvin Pastrana- Mountain Echo, Editor-in-chief

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Image used: courtesy to Gretha Zarate