PYV Summer Camp 2015 - Day 3

Andrew preaching to PYV

Day Three (Tuesday Dec 29)

As usual, the morning begins with a leader’s meeting. Here, one of our guests, – Rev Stuart Bonnington from Fremantle, WA – reminds us of the humanity of Jesus. How we need the forgiveness of God, and how wonderful that we can know we have his forgiveness.

Our prayer meeting today is focussed on youth ministry within our local churches. It is encouraging to hear people speak about their youth group with love and respect. But there are many churches who do not have any youth, or only one or two families with young people. So we prayed for these churches as well, trusting that God will use these churches to bring the gospel to the youth of their community. This is just one of the important aspects of a PYV Camp. It gives youth from small churches the chance to connect with teenagers from across the state and be encouraged in their journey of faith.

While I’m not a big fan of a cooked breakfast, the campers love it. So the hash browns and toast were a winner today. With good food in our stomachs, we went off to our study groups again to work through some questions based on last night’s talk. As were encouraged to rearrange our values in the talk, today we looked at just a bit of what the Bible has to say on “Being open-handed to the poor”. Again, for those playing at home, have a look at Deuteronomy 15:7-11 & James 2:15-17. There was some good discussion around this topic.

Blowing cups with balloons

Foil Towers

A time for personal devotion, then morning tea, was followed by the organised activities for today. And this time it wasn’t the pen thieves we were hunting. Today we were trying to determine the new name taken by Rumpelstiltskin. With a series of competitions and clues, they were able to work out that new name and so rescue the young child. Our activities team have done an amazing job in putting together activities that allow groups to work well with each other, use up some energy, and are a whole lot of fun as well. Good job team!

What is Rumpelstiltskin's new name?

After lunch we had our second session of workshops for the camp. Again, we have sought to put together workshops that are relevant to youth, and relevant to the life of the church. Today’s topics were: “Depression & Our Friends”, “Teenagers & Mission – Yes, they do go together”, “A gracious response to homosexuality,” and a repeat of “How do I know I’m a Christian?” Our young people have very good and important questions rolling around their heads, and we hope that these workshops have helped to answer some of these.

A workshop crowd

A couple of hours of free time to run around, or sit in the shade, or play other games, and then it is time for dinner. The dining room is a noisy and vibrant place when we are all together with our campers, leaders, YouthMETRO trainees, and some young children crowding in to the room.

In the evening comes what will be, for many, one of the highlights of the camps – our evening sessions. Tonight we heard a powerful testimony of God’s grace working in the life of a young man, we watched a video of some work happening in Croydon, and we opened our Bibles to James 3:1-12. From this passage, Andrew challenged us to sort out our speech. These verses of Scripture have much to say about the way we speak and how we use our language.

But importantly, our speech is also a sign of what is going in inside our hearts. “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” So if we have a problem with the language we use and the way we speak, then we have a problem with our heart. And we need Jesus to fix that.

"The mouth speaks what the heart is full of." 

Jesus    

The formal part of the night finished in our study groups catching up on some questions, or in my group, we wrote limericks and haiku to describe our battle with temptation. Then it was off to bed with the radio show entertaining us along the way.

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