Located in the interior part of Vailele is a small campsite where members of the ‘Tree of Life Fellowship Church’ set up camp to mark Easter.

The beautiful worship music led by 2015’s Samoa Idol Winner Yvonne Nikolao and her worship team could be heard from afar. Campers enjoyed one another’s company as they based all that they did on their camp theme ‘Philippians 3:7 - But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ’.

Pastor Sio Nikolao told Sunday Samoan that every day the camp begins and ends with a service honoring the sacrifice of Jesus.

“We always start the day with a service and end the day again with a service,” he said.

“No matter what activity we have set up for the day or how late we go on into the night we have to always honor Jesus from the moment we wake up to the moment we sleep.” Apart from services, fellowships, games and fun the church also held seminars for each ministry within the church.

“Our programme is more focused around the different ministries within the church; starting yesterday (Good Friday) we had all the ministries come up and do a seminar,” Pastor Nikolao.

“The leader of the father’s ministry did an hour’s seminar on what Easter means to them with the floor open to any questions by the other campers, then we had the mothers ministry followed by Sunday school and then this morning we had the worship team ministry.”

The camp also had their sports day yesterday followed by a talent evening full of singing, dances, skits and worship.

One of the aims of the camp was to bring members of the church closer to fellowship and to enjoy Easter together.

“The main focus of our camp is Jesus Christ and his ultimate gift, then the second focus is the strengthening of our church,” Pastor Nikolao said.

“We have members from different denominations who joined our church and we want to bring them closer together.”