Oshkosh Video

See the video that we prepared from our trip to OSHKOSH Camporee 2009 - Courage to Stand -

Remember..."I'll see you at the next camporee or in heaven whichever comes first"...are you coming?

Oshkosh 2014 Promo Video...

Days 5

We so sorry for not updating our blog for the last couple of days. Our schedule has been very busy, and here are some reasons why.

As a preparation day, Friday was a very busy day. We were able to get several new honors, for example, Mario got the soccer honor (not a surprise), meanwhile some of us got to go see the wild animals they had there and were even able to pet a real tiger.

For lunch our leaders decided that we needed to be back at camp by 12 noon. Why? Well they had put together a lunch of all the leftovers from throughout the week. Nobody complained though. It was sooo good!

Mr. & Mrs. G were asked by the conference to monitor a showerhouse on Friday afternoon. When they got back they told us a wonderful story that is our understanding of what has been happening everywhere at the camporee. Their story is that a group of kids were by the showers and started a conversation with Mr. G. Soon after, they had about 6 teenagers around them talking about different issues, from divorce to baptism. One of the girls told them her parents recently got divorced and she was having difficulty dealing with that. Another guy was not interested in baptism and Mr. G talked directly to him about taking that step...
After some time all of them decided to pray together, and right there, in front of the showers they held hands and prayed for each other. Mr. and Mrs. G. came back amazed and glorifying God. We only wonder...What happened with the shower supervision? hopefully nothing!

We know stories just like this have been happening around camp. Another story that our cooks told us was that the man who went to cook for their home club from Pennsylvania (which they couldn't cook for because they were cooking for Ventura!) made a decision for baptism at one of the nightly meetings this week. Praise God!

Well, more updates soon...stay tuned!

Oshkosh Day 4

Last night (Wednesday) Mrs. G let us stay up a little longer so we could interact with some other pathfinders. For some reason that made Esther "go wild" full of energy. She hid in a dark corner and as soon as anyone would walk by, she would jump in front of them asking them 1) What is your name? and 2) where are you from? This made people so startled that it was actually funny...Even the adults were waiting to see people's reactions.

Finally it was time to go to bed. All the generators were supposed to be off and everyone needed to be inside their campsite (and Pr. Bob came to inspect every site, to be sure everyone was in compliance) so we did, brushed our teeth and went to bed.

We got up around 7am. We were hungry and our wonderful cooks were ready with breakfast. Today is going to be an even more special day. Our club planned to go canoeing!!! Most of us have never done that we were actually looking forward that. The weather couldn't be more perfect, about 78F and plenty of sun.

At 9am we put our sun screen protection on and drove about 1 hr to "New London".

Once there we got ready, jumped into a van with 7 canoes behind it in a trailer, and drove another 30 minutes to our "launching place" (not before the mandatory picture and the necessary safety instructions in front of the van). It was a lot of fun. At the last minute Mrs. G decided to send her camera back with the driver. Good thing because at one point or another every canoe tips over and we did end up in the water!

The water was shallow in most places, some no more than 2 feet and nice and refreshing. At times we had some rapids but most of the time it was nice, calm and relaxing.

After the 4 hour trip we were hungry. Thank God our cooks sent us away with sack lunches (a veggie sandwich, a bag of chips, granola bar and an apple) delicious!

We had to return pretty fast because we had to leave about 45 minutes after we got into camp for the evening program. When we got to our campsite dinner was ready (burritos) so we packed another sack, walked to the program place, sat down and ate...(yup, everyone was looking at us with hungry faces!)

Now the bad news, we all are getting sick, so Mr. G went to Walmart and got us "vitamin C" that we all are going to take tonite.

Because of the offsite activity today, we were not able to trade any pins today, but we have gotten some really cool ones. Adam got almost a complete set of the Indianapolis pins, these are very special-each one has a car and if you get the 5 pins the conference will give you #6 with a gold car. Matthew got almost all the crowns pins. There are several and he is missing only 2, the purple and the rainbow and Kenton got all the guitars. Mr. G got a very special one in chinese (he said that it is special but no one knows what it says.)

We hope you are following the nightly program on the Hope Channel website. Just in case, the website is http://www.hopetv.org/ and the program starts at 5pm (Pacific Time).

As usual we posted more pictures in facebook ( www.facebook.com/venturasda) hopefully you are following us there.

Time to go to sleep...God willing, we will post a blog tomorrow while we are getting to the end o of the camporee. Goodnight!

Oshkosh Day3

Last night, after dinner, we went to the nightly program. Thinking that we were going to be early, we left at 6 to be sure that we were going to have good seats. After our 1/2 mile walk, we discovered that the other 35,000 people had the same thought.

We protected our smaller members and walked into a "sea" of people...found the closest position, placed our chairs down and were not able to move. We were really close, about 1/2 a mile from the stage, but we had a great view of the huge screens.

The program was great! In one of the tents, during the day, they give opportunities to people to sing and the best person is presented as part of the program..find a star search "pathfinder style."

We sang and at one point our club pulled our telephones (as lighters) moving them back and forth, suddenly everyone was doing the same...pretty cool.

The play was nice and finished with the note speaker, a pastor from Australia.

Went to bed! Mrs. G was pretty sure that we and everyone around us were quiet. We think she went to bed around 12:30am. (this included the club across from us that had a VERY, VERY noisy generator, and our next door neighbors).

This morning when we got up at 7 a.m. ourdaily run started. Mr. G started the generator so we could charge our phone batteries, mostly because he wanted to be sure that everyone could communicate with us through the day.

About 10:30 a.m. people came to fill up the tanks for the showers (we have a shower truck right behind us), unfortunately the main hose (6") broke and a geyser of water came over our camp on top of 2 of our tents (Esther's, Gabriel's and Andre's) so we had to take everything out of their tents and get them out to dry. Thank God it is so sunny that it dried in just a couple of hours.

This afternoon, most of us went to learn "Archery." It was so nice and difficult, even Kevin got soar, also we went to see the wild animals. Wow, they have leopards, jaguars, and tigers. We are going to try to get in line to pet the little "cub" (we have to pay $4 each).

We tried to get a class with Nathan Green, who is a very famous painter, unfortunately his class is one of the most attractive for everyone, and we were not able to get into the class.

Right in front of our site, the people in the afternoon parade lined up, so we had the whole show in front of us...they are sooooo good!

Again tomorrow, it is going to be a great day. We are going to be canoeing at the Fox River...it is a 4 hour tour. We are really looking forward to that.

Due to the events of today, we were not able to take many pictures, never-the-less, we posted several in www.facebook/venturasda.

Ohskosh Day 2

Last night around 10pm the second group of us finally arrived in Appleton. Very tired to took our rented cars and went to sleep in the hotel.


This morning we got up went for breakfast in the hotel and jumped into our cars on the way to Oshkosh.


Once we arrived we cold see a completely different world. Tents, campers, trailers and motorhomes every where. Pathifinders from all around the world, everyone with different t-shirts representing their club, all using the same logo...The Pathfinder logo. For many of us we have nothing to say but...WOW!

Went ot our site and settle in our tents, we received several instructions from Mrs. G and it was time to GOOOOO.


One of the big things to do here, is trading pins. Our club had prepared our own pin, so everyone received an equal amount of pins and 10.00 for lunch and go to meet people, find lunch and trade pins.

Trading pins is good way for our "older" pathfinders to talk or break the ice with the girls/boys, and wow there are plenty here.




For lunch there are a variarity options, from Asian food to the all american traditional PIZZA, of course most of us choose pizza.



One of the instructions that we received was to be back by 5:15 to have dinner. Most of us were here at that time and MMMMMMM the smell of soup, salad and old time favorite grill chesse sandwiches, plus yummy homemade energy bars by Mrs. Ganther. We have the best people cooking for us. Mrs. Negley (Matthew Negley's grandmother, her sister and her husband--We are so greatful because, thanks to them, we are able to roam around).


At 7pm the doors open for the program tonight. The topic for this week is "Courage to Stand" the story of Esther, we just can't wait... we better hurry up to get a good place!

We are so thankful for being here. The weather is perfect (we were told by Andre, Adam, Kenton and Mr. G that it was raining yesterday) Today is partial cloudy, not too hot and a little windy.

Come and check our blog frequently, no never know when are posting more....

Don't forget to review our pictures on Facebook. We have posted a lot of new ones.

OSHKOSH - Day 1

Last night we finally arrived in Appletown at about 10:30 pm (1 1/2 hours late).

We had several gate changes so we got to know a section of the O'hare airport very well.

This morning we got up and went to exercise to the gym, then breakfast at the hotel and good to go to the campsite. But by the time that we finished breakfast it was pouring rain, so we had no choice but to keep going.

When we got there, the trucks had arrived already and no one was there, so Adam, Andre and kenton moved in the truck to try to find our stuff. Well, it was challenging! Our stuff was mixed all over in the truck, so they were able to find just a few things. By then more people from other clubs started to showing up. Andre, Kenton and Adam were just troopers moving the entire truck. Mean while Mr. G was doing what the rest of the adults were doing and "directing to the rest of us".



Once they finished with the truck we got to move our stuff to our site. The rain has stopped, it was actually nice, but then the humidity is HUGE. You're sweating by just standing there! Before we started setting our camp we went to Wallmart to buy what we had in our list...and of course Adam had to buy himself a pair of aviators (we just wish he learns to to wear them correctly... :) )


Finally around 4pm (CT) we had finished, not before started to rain again.



Now we are super hungry and tired. so Mr. G took us to the "Golden Coral" all you can eat restaurant... wow we enjoyed that!!!



At this time we went to our "new" hotel in Appletown, (it is soooo cool...has a TV in the bathroom! We should take a picture...) and we are waiting for the rest of the group to come in. At 5:00pm (CT) we do not know much about them, we imagine they might be arriving in Chicago pretty soon and then in Appletown at 9:00pm

So there is no much from us to do anymore, so we are going to jump in the swimming pool and relax...

To see more picture go to www.facebook.com/venturasda.

We will keep you posted......

Adam, Kenton, Andre and Mr. G left this morning at 11:30 to Appletown, WI via O'Hare, Chicago.

Our flight landing got a little delayed in Chicago due to a thunder storm in the area, but thank God we arrived well.

We looked for place to eat (Yes, we had to go "over the budget" with this meal! Airport food is so expensive--Please do not tell Mrs. G). and immediately went to the gate E4 for departure at 8:10 pm.

We just got informed that our gate was moved to E3 (not really a big deal) but they also informed us that our flight is going to depart at 9:22, which means that we will arrive in Appletown about 10:30pm. So, tonight is going to a late late night!, since we have to drive about 20 miles to oshkosh to find our hotel.

Mr. G informed us about the plan for tomorrow. We got to be at 10:00 at the camp to receive our equipment, and we also have a list to items that we MUST buy before everyone gets in tomorrow, so we can see that tomorrow it is also going to be a long day. The biggest problem is that it is going to be raining all day tomorrow...

God is protecting us and that is all what we can ask.

We have not taken any pictures yet (Sorry Mrs. Laura) but we promised that will have plenty throught the week, keep checking in.....