On Thursday, January 17, the junior class began their annual camp experience as they hopped on the buses headed to Pu’u Kahea. As with all camps, the students were glad to take a break from school and spend time with their friends.
With senior year and college applications coming up for the juniors, camp chapels and family groups focused on the theme of life purpose. In chapel they heard stories from guest speaker Jordan Seng (Pastor at Bluewater Mission Church), Math Department chair Ross Mukai, and History teacher Katherine Moriyama. Seng broke down a “life of purpose” into three M’s: mission, method and mindset. For junior Nathan Yee, the most memorable takeaway from Seng’s teachings is: “If we seek purpose, we find God. And if we seek God, we find purpose.”
In family groups, the juniors examined how Jesus lived out his purpose in the Gospel stories and what they could learn from that. At the end, everyone took a shot at writing out what they thought their own life purpose was. Maya Liao said, “The biggest takeaway I had from my experience at camp is that no one truly knows what their purpose is; we all just do what we think will help us find it.”
The junior class council took charge of free time at camp, organizing two activities that encouraged everyone’s involvement. The first activity was a relay race that pitted family groups against each other. During the relay, participants had to complete a series of challenges. Kai’mi Duncklee said, “I did the dumpster diving challenge and my arms smelled bad for the rest of the day. It was pretty fun although some of the challenges were a little bit too challenging. But it was still fun because everyone tried to accomplish even the hardest tasks.”
For the first time at a HBA camp, a few hours of free time was spent filming a lip dub video featuring the whole junior class. Each camp cabin group was tasked with choreographing and performing a section of the video and the challenge was filming all the groups’ performances in one take. Class council president Alyssa Mayeshiro came up with the idea after seeing other schools do it. “The lip dub was definitely a success,” said Mayeshiro. “Everyone was really cooperative and we created a lasting memory while having lots of fun together. We still need to film the second half of the lip dub, but I’m really excited for everyone to see the final video.” Like many of her classmates, Cydni Yoshida enjoyed the experience even though it felt daunting at first. “Participating in the lip dub was very fun because I enjoyed watching our class come together and be passionate about one thing,” she said.
