The Cast of a Youth Camp

If we had the opportunity to write a play to tell the story of our 1st annual youth camp, the opening and closing stage directions would be rather depressing.

Buddha: (exits stage left)
Buddha: (returns stage left)

We rented the facilities from a public and therefore Buddhist university. The stage prominently featured a statue of Buddha, so the stage directions were obvious. We were excited to see what the cast of characters God allows us to direct could do in between though.

Aak: Facilitated a conversation on transitioning to life outside of a youth home/orphanage. Tibet and other Bible College students that had grown up in youth homes shared their testimonies, encouraging students to connect to local churches, create structure, and be diligent in selecting friends that would build them up. The peer-to-peer testimonies were powerful, even leading some to tears.

Josh: Josh led large group games that reinforced the theme of the camp "A Victorious Life in Christ" and frequented our photo booth, a tool we used to connect youth to our foundation's Facebook page.

Derry: Our goal was that this camp would help solidify our credibility among youth home leaders. We got an early sign that we were accomplishing just that when after completing registration, one leader joked with Derry, asking him if we could extend the camp for a week. Derry was tasked with the "boring" workshop, an in-depth study of the historical context of Paul's letter to the church in Philippi We accepted some would be bored because we knew others would be excited by academically studying the Bible for the 1st time, and they were!

Hannah and Tak: Hannah set up the prayer room and led a workshop on purity. Tak led a team-building activity where groups of students worked to build a tower out of balloons and straws. They roomed together in one of the rooms of girls, and overall they did a wonderful job of helping make each of the female youth in attendance feel special and cared for.

Niw: Niw did a little bit of everything, from managing the finances, to translating, to maybe most importantly, overseeing our volunteer staff. We recruited students from two local Bible Colleges to help look after the 267 youth in attendance. These partnerships will allow us to not only perform the camp again next year, but to even potentially expand it in length or size.

The climax came Sunday morning, during a somewhat impromptu invitation. Several rededicated their life to the Lord, a few to pursuing ministry/missions, and 3 young ladies made the decision to become a Christian. We praise God for these opportunities for life transformation to play out before our eyes.