PYV West Camp 2018 – Day Four (Final day)

What a beautiful morning.

I know you’re wondering how many people were ready for breakfast at 8.00 this morning. Well . . . the truth is . . . I don’t know. I was late to breakfast.

But I have an excuse. You see, on the final day of most camps, we need to get all our stuff out of the dorms by 9.00am and I was just trying to get ahead of things. I can let you know that by the time I did get to the dining room, it looked like everyone else was there. After breakfast, everyone was sent back to their rooms to make sure that they were packed and ready before our worship session.

In our worship today we had the chance to hear a testimony from Rebekah Daffy. She was honest about some life issues, and encouraging in her confidence in God. It is good to hear testimonies at our camps, and I believe it is something that our teenagers need to hear more. Are the teenagers in your church hearing the testimonies of others in your church? If not, why not?

Jared’s preaching today was from Proverbs 3:1-12, a passage which contains some very familiar statements. Today we learned the secret to wisdom. “The Secret”.

And the secret of wisdom is to know God. Not just knowing that God exists, but knowing God personally – to have a relationship with God. This relationship is characterised by a love for God, trusting God, and importantly submitting to God. There were some great comments in the sermon, and these stood out for me:

You can’t learn wisdom without humility.

When we say, “I don’t like what God says about something” we are leaning on our own understanding.

If you have someone from home or church attending this camp, please talk with them about what they have learned. I can assure you that they have heard some very good things, and I hope they have learned something as well.

PYV camps don’t happen without a lot of work from a lot of people. Jesse and Naomi Crabb worked as conveners and built an outstanding team of leaders around them. We had experienced leaders, and quite a few new leaders at the camp, and they have made a solid impression on our campers. They’ve certainly impressed me too.

The recordings of the talks, and photos and videos will be on www.pyv.org.au in the next week (hopefully). Keep an eye out for them.

West Camp 2019 will be at Norval again, but next year will be a weekend camp starting on Saturday April 6, which is the first weekend of the school holidays. Don’t miss it. 

(Thanks to our music team. You were great.)

 

PYV West Camp 2018 – Day Three

We are on the search for wisdom, and today has been helpful for those on that path.

The leaders meeting continues to be an encouragement to start the day, and having it at 7.30am has turned out to be much nicer than 7.00am. That extra 30 minutes in the morning makes a difference. Well done team for getting up early.

Breakfast at camp is magnificent, though the numbers here at 8.00am seem to be getting smaller as camp goes on. We’ll see how we many are ready for breakfast tomorrow. From breakfast we again made our way to the main room for our worship session. How often do you get to meet with around 100 people to worship God and hear some solid preaching on a Thursday? I expect it’s not all that often, but today that is exactly what we did.

Before I comment on the sermon, I want to thank those who have worked to make sure we have music, sound, and vision. It is so wonderful that we can walk into the room and when it’s 9.00am, a video begins with some highlights from yesterday. Then after a call to worship, we sing a couple of songs which are accompanied by young musicians who are prepared. And it is only through some technical wizardry that we can hear things properly. Thank you to Nick Attrill and his team for making sure the worship time just works.

Jared preached from Proverbs 2:1-22 today with the title “Wisdom: How You Get It.” He began by pointing out that the only time we really think about wisdom is when we have a hard decision to make, but to become wise we need to be growing and exercising wisdom every day. This is what will prepare us for that hard decision when it comes. From there we learned that the metaphor of a path is a key idea on this topic, and through Proverbs 2 we read about a path quite often. We also read about that path in other parts of the Bible too – like Matthew 7:13-14.

I was struck by Jared’s words about the protection of wisdom. Comparing verses 5-8 with verses 9-11 we see much the same thing, but there is an important distinction. 5-8 refer to God while 9-11 refer to wisdom in the same way, so we see the connection between God and Wisdom. Interestingly, verse 8 and verse 11 speak of guarding and protection. When we ask God to protect us, God does this by giving us wisdom. Let’s use the wisdom that God gives.

One of the great things about using a camp-site at Halls Gap is the beauty of the landscape around us, and it would be a shame to just look at it rather than enjoy it. So, this afternoon we had the option of a long walk to the Pinnacle and back to camp, a short drive and walk to McKenzie Falls, or a walk into town. While I took the easy option of a walk into town and an ice-cream, others took the chance to get into nature at the falls or up to the Pinnacle.

McKenzie Falls

Back to camp from Halls Gap township.

And everyone returned safely. 😎

The annual “City Vs Country” soccer game was a good game and we congratulate the Country team for their winning effort. Though I think some of the country people should accept that they have now moved into the city and swap teams.

He's hard to stop once he gets going.

Good game everyone.

After dinner we enjoyed a fun night of Family Feud in the dining room. Some good questions that were surprisingly difficult to answer. Tomorrow we find out which team was our winning team through all the camp activities.

There’s one more important thing that happens at PYV camps that I should again write about. I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that study groups are a key element of what we do. I hope this never changes. One other thing that is a key part of PYV camps is the conversations leaders have with campers. In this conversations, each camper is spoken with by their study leader individually to talk about their own faith and answer questions about Jesus. Of course, we want everyone to know Jesus and to find their salvation in Him, so we ask people about their own faith. We don’t pressure teenagers – we don’t believe we need to. But we don’t shy away from asking them about faith either.

Today it was wonderful to look around to see that in various places in the dining room, or on the seats outside, these private conversations were taking place. May God continue to use these camps to transform lives.