A Journey on the Mountain - Nicolas Attallah

The world is a place for billions of human beings, people living in tribes, nations, countries, every human being belongs to a certain group, tradition, faith, culture, and even a unique cuisine.
So imagine that you invite people from 7 different countries to put them together in a Senior high summer camp, giving them small cabins to sleep in, inside the bush, and apparently abandon them with the forty young teenager campers .
A new relationship started at the moment when the participants gathered up, they felt close to each other, they start seeing the similarities between them, they share the same age, same reason, similar stories from back home, they still have language and cultural differences, but now they are trying to step over them to start to bond and to create a beautiful friendship among each other, thanks to the Mennonite Central Committee, Alberta, that sponsored this program by bringing 12 participants from Nigeria, Uganda, Colombia, Jordan, Dominican Republic, Palestine and Israel. Some of these countries suffer from intense violence, conflict, occupation, civil wars, etc.
Day one started at 8:00 am, the bell rang, time to wake up, the sun was rising up in the sky, breakfast was waiting, so we made our way out from the bush to reach the lodge, we gathered around the table with our Cabin mates, shared together how cold the night was, thanking God we made it through the first night. The young campers were already energized and waiting for the activities to start, another bell rang and here we go, we gathered up for the morning devotions to discuss the theme of Camp Valaqua, “ Journey on the Mountain” with a Nigerian pastor called Gopar Tapkida , who started telling us how to change our Burdens into tools, by sharing a wonderful story about how to carry our cross, without asking God to shorten it. We can keep running away from our burdens, but we will never reach happiness, because in order to reach that point we need to learn how to change our burdens into a stepping stone to pass through the river, so sometimes we need to suck it up and to walk bravely with our cross that will lift us in the end to a better way of living, as Jesus told us that the path is not easy, but the reward is for those who reach the end of it.
The days continued with bells ringing over and over again, announcing the start of a new learning day and new fun activities, awakening our sense of adventure in the wild nature, three activities a day, either camp skills, sky swing, nature, wall climbing, canoeing, crafts, archery. Every activity makes us feel how little we know in this world, and each minute we spent at the camp was a learning journey.
The Assistant Director, a young lady called Heather, would ring the bell announcing time for lunch, along with other announcements for the day, like how to clean our plates and to scrape them before they enter the washing machines, and put our chairs in the right place, at the mean time, Mateas, a young boy originally from Liberia was fooling around, while the counselors were trying to put him back in his chair. These joyful moments we spent with the campers lifted our souls up knowing that the new generation in Canada is hungry for a world ruled by peace and harmony.
It was amazing to see how all the international participants stepped in to help the counselors with organizing and watching over some of the campers who needed more patience, support, motivation, and to stop acting in a violent way. One of the stories that touched my heart was when Sani, a Muslim peace worker from Nigeria, asked Mateas to sing with him in front of everybody during chapel. This “small” action changed his attitude for the rest of the camp.
Each morning during the chapel time, us internationals acted out a skit in front of the young campers, one of these stories consisted of Mr. And Mrs. Porcupine and their son Fluffy. Fluffy wasn’t fluffy at all, he had spiky hair, he tried a lot to believe that he was literally fluffy, and failed, so he faced a lot of troubles, and sadness, since he was trying to become someone else, instead of embracing his own nature. On his journey he meets a Rhinoceros who was named Hippo, and who was facing similar troubles. Both Fluffy and Hippo were lonely, unhappy creatures, and there were barriers pulling them away from their societies, and when they were together they found the strength to crash it down, and move on with their lives without denying their own identity, and characteristics.
All the days felt so right, there is a system going on, a journey we need to take in order to get to the top of the mountain, a time for healing and cleaning our souls from all the burdens we carried from home by sharing our stories with the campers sitting in the dark around the fire, liberating ourselves from our Monsters that only bring fear, and distract us from our vision.