PYV West Camp 2017 - Day 1

It was a warm drive up from Melbourne for those travelling west, and it was an equally warm drive for those travelling east to Halls Gap for the start of West Camp 2017. Even at the start of this blog post I want to thank those who drove campers here and then drove home again. We hope you had a peaceful and a safe journey home.

Our first activity was to divide into groups and play some simple games to get to know people within the group. One of these activities was to build something that would protect an egg which was thrown by one of the leaders. Not everyone was successful.

Dinner was fantastic. If this is a sign of the standard of meals for the rest of camp, we will be a bunch of very happy campers. We have always had good cooks serving us at West Camp, and we are grateful for those who give up their time to serve people in this way.

After dinner we had our first session together. The leadership team were introduced along with the pastoral and the first aid teams. What a blessing it is to have people on the camp who are there to look after the camper – Camp parents Stuart & Belle McKerrow – and other who are chaplains to our leaders – Brad Haughey and Lori Pereria.

The Bible was opened and Romans 1:1-17 was read, then it was time for our first talk. As I am the one preaching at this camp I’d like to tell you how amazing the talk was, and to give you examples of the way God used my message for his glory. While I hope He does use it for His glory, perhaps I’ll just summarise.

Preaching from the first five chapters of Romans led me to seeing Romans 3:23-24 as a key statement to this section.

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” 

I pointed out from Romans 1:18-3:23 who has sinned and fallen short, and from Romans 3:24-5:21 how we are and can be justified. My main theme for this camp is “The Gospel is the basis for our freedom” The next talks will build on this theme.

Please keep praying for our camp. There are any people here at the camp who don’t know each other well yet. I hope that by the end of camp they will feel that they know each other very well.