Family Camp

Our second camp of the summer in Toral was to attend the annual Family Camp. I think this is my 4th camp in Toral and by far it is my favorite!! This week was so much fun and I hope by end of this blog post, you will be encouraged from our time there!!

Almost every day, in the afternoon, all of the families went on excursions to nearby cities. It was so fun and we saw some really cool places. I was totally taking mental notes of even more places we can take visitors!!

Our first excursion was to a city, which I do not for the life of me remember the name, but I'm pretty sure I saw a sign at the entrance of the city, that said something about it being the first Spanish village or something like that. Well it was one of the coolest places! And we went on a cloudy day so the sky was just amazing!

Here we are with a precious family that lives in the city of La Carolina. We met them in April, on our first visit, and they have become very dear friends. They actually came home with us after the camp and spent the weekend with us.

Another of the excursions was to the region of Astoria, about an hour and a half away, to a river that runs through the area. Many of the campers rented canoes for the day and had a fun trip down the river. But those of us with young children went to a nearby village and hung out. It was another amazing place and I cannot wait to return!!

Here are the boys while we are watching everyone go by with their canoes...

We had so much fun walking around the city that is right off the ocean.

And no visit of any kind is ever complete with some coffee!! These moms were very encouraging and I really enjoyed visiting with them! Plus the boys had fun with their new friends.

And of course, no trip to Toral is complete without a visit to the Bodega. This was an extra fun visit because all the kids stayed behind and had pizza and watched a movie. So we had a great time of fellowship with the adults! It was the last night of the camp and a sweet friend went around and took photos of each couple...

One of the days we went on a hike through this amazing village that is only about 20 minutes from Toral. The entire village has cobblestone streets and is SO old. Very cool!

At some point while we were out hiking, Cael asked for the camera. Being that digital pictures are free and he is definitely at that age to know what to do with a camera, we handed it to him...here are his three self-portraits.

Sorry...I feel like these photos have no order to them...probably because they don't! Well here is a group picture of everyone on the last day of the camp. So fun!!

Meet Elena...she is a VERY special lady that I met this week. She lives in Barcelona with her husband, who is the elder/pastor at their church, and their 5 children. We had many amazing conversations throughout the week about parenting, the gospel, motherhood, and much more. I am incredibly thankful to have met this amazing lady and for the encouragement that she was to me.

One of my favorite aspects to the camp was the schedule; it was very relaxed, which was intentional so there would be a lot of time for fellowship. At the end of lunch, there was generally free time for a few hours and most people stayed in the cafeteria to talk and play games. I played my first game in Spanish...phew! It was both super hard and super fun-we all laughed so hard! Times of laughter together followed by deep conversations about the gospel and other spiritual topics are always recipes for encouragement of the heart and this is exactly what happened to both Gus and I!!

Before every preaching time, there was precious times of worship.

Followed by Gus' preaching on the One Anothers. He did an amazing job, of course, and was really encouraged by the response. Many people told him how they were so blessed by this topic and his clear preaching through the sections of Scripture.

Two nights before the camp ended, again, SO sorry for the awful order of this post but that's how the pictures loaded up and I didn't feel like totally re-arranging every single picture, we had an amazing BBQ out on the patio. Generally they have a BBQ at some point during every camp and they are always amazingly yummy. I remember my first BBQ here in Toral and the surprise at the Spanish version of BBQ. But now I totally love it and look forward especially to the potatoes and aioli sauce! YUM!!

I hope you can see from this blog post how much we thoroughly enjoyed our time at family camp. It was a fun week of excursions and seeing new parts of Spain. And it was an encouraging week as we met many new people from literally all over Spain. The fellowship was definitely a highlight of the week and we came away from this camp with even more good friends that we can't wait to see again.