In the morning Fr. Vasken Kouzouian celebrated Divine Liturgy with the staff, CITs, and early arrival campers to prepare them for their spiritual ministry of being a counselor of St. Vartan Camp to campers. In the afternoon we welcomed campers who arrived for registration. Afterwards, parents and campers had orientation sessions to acclimate them to the camp program. After dinner, campers, CITs and staff took their swim test so the lifeguards could gauge their swimming capabilities for safety purposes. Following the swim test, campers went to Icebreakers with Marcus Dalakian, the programming coordinator for Session C.

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We were visited by our primate, Abp. Khajag Barsamian, where he spoke to the campers about the St. Vartan Camp family and how it is apart of a bigger family, the Armenian Church. The primate also spoke in regards to his recent trip to Jerusalem with the youth leaders of the church. During evening program, Arthur spoke about the trip in an hour long presentation he compiled which included the diocesan youtube video created this summer. Below is a link to this video.

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This evening Magali Altunian and Arthur Sabounjian presented a movie and PowerPoint regarding their recent pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The campers were extremely engaged and continued to ask questions through the night and into the morning the next day. Attached to this post is the Eastern Diocese’s short montage depicting the experiences felt while on the trip, it was also the opening movie played during the presentation.

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Today after morning worship, the campers began their daily routine. In sports, the campers enjoyed a basketball competition with activities such as a 3-point shootout and dunk contest. In class, the campers sang songs with Maestro Khoren, attended religious classes, and had a heritage class led by Stepan Piligian in which campers went “back in time” looking at famous figure-heads of Armenian history. Counselors played the role of three forefathers/mothers, during a question and answers session with the campers. At lunchtime, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, visited and spoke to the campers about his recent trip to Jerusalem with the young leaders of the church. Afterwards, he gave them all crosses from Jerusalem as a gift for them to remember the importance of the Holy Land in their lives. Later the junior campers enjoyed taking pictures with Arthur’s underwater camera at the pool. In the evening, campers enjoyed a slightly more serious evening program; talking with Fr. Hratch Sargsyan, Fr. Krikor Sabounjian, Archbishop Yeghishe Gizirian, Maestro Khoren Mekanejian, Maria Derderian, and Jennifer Morris about serving the church in both pastoral and lay settings. We then closed the day as usual with evening vespers before campers drifted off to sleep.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNI!!!!!!
LOVE,
SVC STAFF :-)

What a busy day we’ve had! We were blessed with a visit from our Primate, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, who met with us and urged campers and staff to start thinking about different ways that they can contribute to the life of the Armenian Church, whether it be within their parishes or even as clergy members one day. In evening, we played the SVC version of “Clue” - campers ran around finding clues and solving the mystery of who popped Gevork the inflatable monkey. It was KLC at the pool with “da oil” (don’t worry mayrig yev hayrig, we will explain when we get home)! The oldest teens wrapped up the night by continuing to plan the camp activity they are going to lead tomorrow night. We can’t wait to find out what they have in store for us!

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We were blessed with another beautiful day to start off our last week here at SVC. We were excited to welcome two clergymen who will be staying with us all week: Fr. Daniel Karadjian, from Syracuse, NY who is teaching religion classes and Fr. Shnork Souin, of Livingston, NJ, who is teaching Armenian classes. After a delicious dinner of chicken parm and spaghetti(a favorite here at the Ararat Center), we played a camp wide game of Capture the Flag today in our olympics teams, blue versus red. The game was so close, and all the campers had fun running around the lower field, along with CITs and counselors.

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