Youth Camp 2016

“As we realize that Christ lives within us, we also come to realize that Christ lives among us and makes us into a body of people witnessing together to the presence of Christ in the world.”    

H. Nouwen

YOUTH CAMP IN REMEDIOS - August 2016

When we go other countries to participate in ministry, we get to experience the presence of Christ in the world.  There is a big difference between mentally knowing something and experiencing it.  God has given us the blessing of working with the church in Remedios and Buenavista for several years and every year we learn something new about God.

This year God enabled us to have three new “firsts” at the Remedios Youth Camp.

After two years of holding the Youth Camp at the church in Remedios, God opened an opportunity to hold camp at a facility only  65 miles away. 

This solved the never-ending problem of securing transportation for a long trip and made it easier for the travelers who had to go in the back of a truck. 

To make it even better, the facility (a Nazarene church) had dorms,

all the media equipment we needed,

and—for those who have experienced Cuba's heat in August—an air-conditioned sanctuary.

Secondly, the attendance to camp was blessed, because many young people who had not previously attended camp were able to go.  Six years ago, the first camp had 40 young people.  This year there were 90.  We were indeed blessed to see all of them worshiping and learning about God together.

Thirdly,  SVCC’s Centro’s pastor Juan Murillo was the main speaker for the camp.

This was his first time in Cuba. 

And even though he had heard us talk about Camp all these years, nothing equaled the experience of being there. So Juan experienced the love, thirst for God’s word and excitement of the young people.  But what impacted him most was to see how the young people overcome so many obstacles in their society and draw closer to God in the process.  It changed his outlook of  his work with young people in the U.S.  Although we know that with God’s help we can move mountains, there’s no equivalent to seeing those mountains actually move the way Juan saw it with this group of young people in the center of this small island.   

The study at the Camp was based on Psalms. That God sees and hears us through all we experience emotionally in life: our pain, our anger, our joy, our gratefulness, and our awe of our great God.   

Below is a short video from Daisel, a young man in Remedios who expresses what this study meant to them.

Each day after the study, the young people broke into small groups to discuss what they had learned and how to apply it to their lives.

The second part of the morning was spent learning about modern day psalmists (lyrics and music composers) and Nick Vujicic,  and how they worship God with their lives.

As usual, Oscar outdid himself and here he is trying to imitate Job Gonzales who composed the Camp’s theme song “You Are My All”.

Psalms are a poetic form of expression, the young people were asked to express themselves through art.  They spent a great deal of time on these drawings and presented them to the group the last day of Camp.

In the evenings, the young people took over.  They presented skits, readings, and performance art with mimes. 

Their worship group was phenomenal.  They practiced numerous hours to learn new songs and putting together a very special worship time.

And, of course, you cannot have Camp without competition where the teams scored points by correctly answering questions about the study and the life stories of the psalmists, being on time, winning at the various games and completing their chores.    

Juan asked them difficult questions about the study in Psalms to show they understood how to apply what they learned.  A representative from each team had to answer the question to get points.

Notice the large die on the top left quadrant of the photo and the game board they devised for a game.

Lots of energy went into this competition.

In the end, it was nothing short of spectacular for this group of young people.  They spent a week away from home, focused and dedicated to learning about God and sharing special memories with the community of faith.

Thank you to all who supported this special project through your prayers and financial contributions.

~ Oscar and Rachel