By Christina Myles

For the ninth year in a row, Camp Troy is up and running at Bush Memorial Baptist Church.
The camp is the church’s twist on vacation Bible school, and it blends everything from scripture lessons to sports.
“This camp is to encourage students to learn more about scripture and know God better,” said camp director Marshall LeCroy, who is also the family pastor at Bush Memorial.
More than 175 students in grades kindergarten through seven are taking part in the camp. Activities will include crafts, songs, Bible lessons and faith-building activities, as well as a fishing, boating and even football.
The unique aspect of Camp Troy is it’s different activities tracts available to students.
Those activities feature fishing and boating as well as team sports such as football and basketball, individual sports like archery, creative classes such as cooking and pottery and cultural classes about South America and Asia.
Those classes and tracts that keep youngsters coming back each year, LeCroy said. “Camp Troy started as a way to reach our community in a new way that encourages church family and non church family to visit and feel like they are a part of the church and share in the scripture and show love of Jesus,” LeCroy said.
LeCroy has the help of 75 volunteers who range in age from eighth-graders to adults,  and they help make the camp a success.
“I like to help out with the church and I love to teach the kids,” said Charles Henderson High School freshman Margorie Ocampo.
Elissa Calhoun, an eighth-grader at Charles Henderson Middle School, said she volunteered because she once attended Camp Troy and was interested in seeing how everything worked behind the scenes. “So far everything has been going really good,” Calhoun said. “All the kids are really well-behaved and a lot of them are very open with conversations.”
Camp Troy continues through Friday.