‘Awesome place for a camp’
Church event gives economic boost to Havasu

A summer church camp descended on Lake Havasu City providing a weeklong economic boost by filling almost all rooms at one hotel and ordering mass amounts of food from restaurants around town.

“We are always looking for a place to do it,” said Compass Bible Church Pastor Bobby Blakey. “This year, we were really happy to discover the Nautical (Beachfront Resort). Lake Havasu City has everything we need. This has turned out to be an awesome place for us to have camp.”

The church from Southern California brought 360 campers from seventh- through 12-grades and 60 adults for its fourth Revival Camp on July 18. The camp leaves town today.

Blakey said the church’s non-denominational congregation has grown to 2,500 since it started five years ago.

“It’s really fun because we get to learn about God and play games at the same time,” said 16-year-old Jenae Kaiser, from Lake Forest, Calif. “The lake is awesome.”

Jennifer Baker, Nautical’s director of marketing, said it was the largest summer church camp booked at the hotel — which is known to fill up with partiers during spring break and holiday weekends.

“They are a great group of kids,” she said. “It (has) definitely been very good for us. They have almost purchased the whole hotel. … I still can’t get over how accommodating everyone has been. These are great kids. Very well mannered, polite. (I) don’t even know that I have (all these) kids here. That’s how good these kids are.”

Valerie Ogden, the volunteer head of hospitality for the camp, said it has been great working with local restaurants to feed the campers.

Ogden said she ordered 1,300 tacos from Taco Bell, 1,000 breakfast burritos from McDonald’s, 750 six-inch sandwiches from Subway, 100 pans of pasta and 1,300 slices of pizza from Pizza Hut.

“We tried to throw all the money we spend on food locally,” Ogden said. “It’s just been such a fun time. We are looking at coming back every year around this time. I would definitely say everyone is excited for the business, and we are so thankful that they are willing to take a quantity order like we give them. It has been a great marriage for us.”

Several managers of the local branches of the national chains said they enjoyed the business.

Kali Hope, a shift manager at the McDonald’s at 100 Swanson Ave., said making the large quantity of breakfast burritos “wasn’t that bad.”

“We made them in about three hours. At first we made sure she wasn’t hoaxing us or anything,” Hope said.

Sherry Castronovo, general manager of Taco Bell at 44 N. Lake Havasu Ave., said preparing all of the tacos was a “challenge.”

“It was a huge order,” she said. “That was awesome. In these times, everything helps and that was a huge, huge sale for us. That was awesome. I’m sure everyone of us was more than happy to have them.”

Blakey said the camp used to travel to Lake Isabella in California and Glorieta, New Mexico. He said a congregation member mentioned Lake Havasu City. He said the camp is designed to “revive teenagers for Jesus Christ to preach the gospel so they can repent of their sins and be saved.”

“We have searched far and wide for places to do this, and this here at Lake Havasu is kind of ideal,” Blakey said. “It worked out great.”

You may contact the reporter at jleatherman@havasunews.com