The Walls of Jericho

Kid’s camp last week was a blast, but also a weekend of craziness!  There were very few rules, and the children aged 5-12 were fed supper at 10:00 pm, sent to bed at midnight and awoken at 7:00 the next morning by some sort of fog horn.  The children were fed lots of candy and there was no chemical in the pool, which made for some incredibly foggy water…  It was amazing to me that no one experienced sickness or injury on the weekend.  It was neat to experience a completely different way of doing things that totally worked.  My eyes were definitely opened and the kids had an absolute blast as far as I could tell. 

The second night of camp, we had a fire in the large fire pit.  Approximately 50 children were all given marshmallows on sticks that were two feet long and then told to stay far away from the fire.  As you may be able to imagine, immediately all 50 children swarmed to the fire and shoved their marshmallows into the flames.  They proceeded to whip their flame-engulfed marshmallows out of the fire while other kids tried to cook their marshmallows with the flames on the sticks of other children.  Amazingly enough, there were no burns or serious injuries after this event.

The next event that took place was a reenactment of the fall of Jericho.  All of the children were given small flags on wooden sticks.  While the band played, the kids marched around a makeshift city created with cardboard and paper.  The idea was that when the horn blew, the kids would all destroy the cardboard city.  The last thing we heard as we saw the children charging toward the middle was, “Esperen!” (wait in Spanish), but it was too late.  The horn blew and the kids all ran to the center and started beating at the walls with their sticks.  They came at it from all four sides and all 50 or so children ended up in the middle swinging their sticks around in the midst of a pile of paper and cardboard ruins.  There were kids under the cardboard and others beating at it with their sticks from on top.  As leaders we stood back and watched in amazement as the city of Jericho was completely demolished in mere seconds.  Much to the astonishment of our team, not a single child was seriously injured during the event, and I think all the kids had a blast.  I think the reenactment was probably a fairly accurate representation of the first fall of Jericho.  

-Erin/Michelle