Over the Easter break, a number of our church family were involved in leading on SU camps. The stories coming out of the camp were encouraging stories of God at work in many young people’s lives. Here are few stories from Loop Camp, and Camp Mayhem.
Loop Camp
Every Easter for the past 7 years a contingent from Living Church has joined with members of other local churches and the Scripture Union School Chaplains in our area to help run Loop Camp. This year the Fittell family and Megan Wallace (kids church team leader) went on camp with the biggest group of kids from our church to date. In total there were 48 campers and 23 Leaders/helpers.
It was a great time away with the kids, having fun and exploring God’s word together. Despite some Covid restrictions we enjoyed the usual camp activities: water wars, slime games, trips to aqua fun park and the Noosa pool and more, as well as daily spiritual input time. This year in the spiritual input time we used a revised version of the ‘Party’ Community Connect program from a few years ago. As we explored ‘God’s invitation to his forever party’ together several kids felt lead to take next steps in their relationships with Jesus. For many it was to find out more about God with their chaplains and families; for others it was to be brave and live for Jesus more boldly seeking to invite others to Jesus forever party, and for 4 campers it was to accept Jesus invitation to be a part of His family and His forever party for the first time. Praise God!
- Please pray for all the kids having come back from camp that their families will be supportive and they will continue to explore Jesus and grow closer to him.
- We even had a family from camp come to visit us at Living church on the first Sunday of term. Pray for follow up conversations and relationships in church and chaplaincy programs.
- And Thank God for the opportunities to share his life changing good news with a young generation of his image bearers.
Tom Fittell
Camp Mayhem
I’m so thankful I was able to lead on camp mayhem for many reasons but the time I was able to have with two specific boys in my small group definitely stands out as a highlight. I originally thought I might struggle with them in my group distracting others or just not listening but wow did they prove me wrong. Each day they would ask to read the bible in small groups and even made me bring my bible to activities off site in case they had time to read it. They were asking questions and actually listening for the answer. They were always the first kids to recap the talk or the bible story to help explain it to the rest of the group. On the last day of camp I was so excited to give them little bibles of their own to take home. Their eagerness to listen and to learn was such a blessing and an encouragement to me. I’m so thankful that we as leaders had the opportunity to spend time chatting with these kids about God but also so thankful for how God has used the hunger that these boys had to hear his word to inspire me in my own faith.
Zoë Bates