On the 9th and 10th of July 2009, Chinmaya Mission Australia (Sydney) Brisbane Centre held their first Balavihar day camp at the Chelmer Community Hall, which turned out to be a huge success. Over 30 kids attended the camp over the 2 days and many sevaks and volunteers helped out to make this a camp to remember. Br Gopal Chaitanya was the Acharya of the camp on the topic Lord Ganesha ‘The Success Giver.’

In our camp, Gopalji told us the whole story of Lord Ganesha incorporating it with many other fun activities. Some of these activities included

1. Making Ganesha problem solving box
2. Ganesha Olympics
3. Role play activities
4. Quiz
5. Bhajans (Ganapathy Ganapathy .... with hand actions)
6. Chanting (OM shuklam ... etc ... with hand actions and meaning)

Making a Ganesha problem solving box was a challenge. We decorated this box using different kinds of fabric and craft. Lord Ganesha is the lord of removing obstacles so the purpose of this box is that you write on a piece of paper any problems you have and put it in the box and you pray to Lord Ganesha to solve/remove them.

The Ganesha Olympics was a chance for the kids to play some active games, work as a team and have some competition within the teams. The Olympics included some fun games such as wheelbarrow, lime and spoon race, relay racing and the sack race.

The role play was a chance for the kids to demonstrate their understanding of the stories and use their creativity to produce an interesting play for the parents to watch.

All the groups did an amazing job and it was very hard to choose a winner because all of them had humour, interest and explained the story well.

The quiz was a great time to test the kids’ knowledge on what they had learned in the camp. Additional pressure was applied because they had to compete with the other teams. All these activities were very popular with the kids and really helped expand their knowledge and have a lot of fun!!!!

We also learnt that as Lord Ganesha sacrificed his tusk to write the Mahabharatha for our benefit, we also for the benefit of the entire world, we also should sacrfice something each day. We also need to be grateful for what we have. We have so much yet we are so unfulfilled because we are greedy. Therefore let's learn to be grateful and give to those unfortunate. So we decided that everyday we would sacrifice something we like and with that saving, donate 10 cents which we will keep in our probleming solving box. When it is full we will donate that money to our favourite charity.

There were so many things to learn from this camp that it was amazing. A few very important things I take away from this camp are:

• Do your best and leave the rest
• It's the Lord's Wish, Whatever that happens, happens for the best
• If you rest you rust
• What goes around comes back around

This was an awesome camp with Br Gopalji and all the kids thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sure all the kids want something as enjoyable as this to happen again soon with Gopalji!!