Shocco takes ropes course to Venezuelan camp, brings staffer here to learn

El back up-o,” Cory Horton shouts to Simon Ayala, signaling for the young Venezuelan man to scoot backward on the 20-foot-high tight wire on which they’re both perched.
   
But Ayala can’t move backward very easily — he’s laughing too hard at Horton’s attempt at Spanish, as well as the gestures that accompanied it.
   
“Mostly what we speak is a little bit of Spanish and a lot of ‘Cory,’” Horton said with a grin.
   
Horton, who works in recreation at Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega, recently spent 10 days teaching Ayala the ropes — literally — of running a high-ropes course. 
   
“It’s a useful and effective tool in training up Christ’s disciples. We believe in it, and we know he (Ayala) believes in it, too,” said Buster Taylor, Shocco’s executive director.
   
Ayala serves as director of recreation at Camp Carabobo Baptist Camp, a 66-acre establishment in Venezuela that supports the ministry and programs of the nation’s Baptist churches.
   
And in addition to that big responsibility, Ayala now has a big smile to boot — thanks to five harnesses, 900 feet of cable and four 40-foot metal poles that recently made their way down to his stomping grounds in South America.
   
A team of five from Shocco, including Horton, went in late April to construct a curso de cuerdas (ropes course) at Camp Carabobo. 
   
The trip, Horton said, was an outgrowth of a bond the two camps have shared since the partnership between the Alabama Baptist State Convention and the National Baptist Convention in Venezuela began in 2001.
   
The idea for the course was birthed when Daniel Rea, an student who worked at Carabobo, came to spend the summer as a staffer at Shocco in 2003. He came away with new ideas, one of which was the belief that his camp back home needed a ropes course like Shocco’s.
   
His plea was pretty convincing.
   
In August 2004, Taylor and others took some low-ropes initiatives to Venezuela to lay the groundwork for team-building activities at Carabobo — and to see if they were ready for the higher stuff. “After five minutes with Simon, Buster (Taylor) said, ‘He’s solid,’” Horton said.
   
Prior to their visit, Ayala had found harnesses the camp had purchased for other activities. With the help of his military-trained brother and some homemade ziplines, he had already begun cautiously experimenting with the possibilities for high ropes at the camp.
   
“He (Ayala) is very good at this type of activity, but he is also very, very safety conscious,” said James McLendon, recreation supervisor at Shocco. 
   
Taylor agreed, saying Ayala’s main concern was to do it right.
   
And do it right they did — beginning with crunching numbers and talking logistics.
   
“We found pretty quickly that because of termites, the trees and telephone poles would never work in Venezuela,” Horton said. 
   
Many hours of research later, Horton tracked down someone who had constructed metal-pole ropes courses in Egypt and India. Details were penciled in and offerings were collected, and in March, both sides signaled the go-ahead.
   
An 800-pound crate of equipment was soon bound for Carabobo by ship, and a five-man team bearing 700 pounds of tools between them were headed by airplane to meet it.
   
When they converged on the camp, three days of continuous work had the course up and running — four activity elements mirroring those at Shocco, all based on team-building and disciple training.
   
“A lot of people think ropes courses are all ‘Six Flags’ and have nothing to do with personal spiritual growth,” Taylor said. “I learned really quickly that at Carabobo that wasn’t their intention at all.”
   
In his own language, Ayala agreed. “I believe the ropes course will be a great discipleship tool and will help those at our camp learn how to work as a team.”