Thoughts Leading Youth Camp by Rachel

Moses and God have a chat.

I was overwhelmed when Pastor Alexis asked Oscar and me to give the Bible and Missions studies at the Youth Retreat.  Alexis told us his objective: deepen the faith of the young people and challenge them to live out the gospel in their daily life.  But, we had to come up with all the material. 

I felt like Moses.  He had so many excuses why he could not do what God wanted him to do.  Like him I said: " I have never been a good speaker. I wasn't one before you spoke to me, and I'm not one now. I am slow at speaking, and I can never think of what to say."  

But the LORD answered, " Who makes people able to speak or makes them deaf or unable to speak? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Don't you know that I am the one who does these things?  Exodus 4: 10-11.

So, being quite aware of our shortcomings and trusting God we forged ahead.

Now, here we were, at the Youth Camp on Tuesday morning after breakfast, after worship, in an interactive Bible study with 50+ people ready to learn whatever God had in store for them. 

 

Not far into the Bible study I realized:  These kids are smart.  They are interested.

Many participate and ask questions. They actually know the Bible content as well as the sequence of the books. 

God was at work in our Bible study.

Youth camp kids having morning devotions.

The objective of the Mission study was to widen their view of world missions.  We had three sessions.  Two of them I almost changed because I thought they weren’t appropriate.  I’m glad I listened to God’s whisper and kept those sessions in the study.

It was those two sessions that most impacted the group.  The kids were inspired by two teenagers in a small Texas town who collected donations to take to a tribe in Africa and by a 90-year-old deaf woman who went to the Czech Republic for missions. 

“Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, 
your faithfulness to the skies.”  Psalm 36:5

Competition

Competition makes me uncomfortable.  I feel uncomfortable for people who lose, because I don’t want anyone to feel like a loser.  Yes, I know, this wimpy, but it’s one of my idiosyncrasies I never got around to working out during therapy.

Team competition using newspapers

I observed how they interacted with each other as they were divided into groups for competition.  Competitive?  Yes.   Did each group want to win?  Yes.  Did they let the other teams know they were in for a tough contest?  Yes.  But all this was done so lovingly, and in the midst of laughter and cheers that it was difficult to tell who was in which team.

Babel?

The current train of thought today is that spreading the good news of Jesus should be left to people who are native to the country.  They know how best to reach their compatriots.  There’s a lot of truth in this.

But I say, there is also a great blessing in the interaction of people from different countries and realizing that we are one community in God.

I was listening to several adults who came from another village to join us for an evening.  They were sharing their faith and how God works in their lives.  And for the first time I was able to experience the reality of the global community in God.

Although their “problems” were different, the way God worked in their lives was the same, their response to God in the face of difficulties was the same, their faith in God was expressed in the same way…just in a different language.

Sweetest Name I Know

One day the challenge for the competition was to sing the Camp’s Theme song in English.  Quite a challenge, because it was even difficult for me to sing it in English.

A lot was going on that afternoon and I heard some of the kids and a leader practicing a hymn.  Oscar went to see if he could help.  I went on to do other things.

That night 10 young people, directed by Oscar sang the hymn “Now I Belong to Jesus, Jesus Belongs to me” in English.  Since many of them did not know English they had phonetically written the words so they could sing it.

It was the highlight of the Camp for me.  I felt like bawling.  I was so touched by this gift, by their effort to learn this hymn, by their love and acceptance.  And by God’s love who transcends geography, ideology and language.

-Rachel