PYV Summer Camp 2017 - A final report

"Under the Sea" - Summer Camp 2017

From December 27 2017 to January 1 2018 over 200 wonderful people met together at Rawson Village for the 2017 PYV Summer Camp. Right at the start I want to acknowledge the amazing work done by our convener, Ash Haughey, and the executive leadership team she put together. Nothing works without preparation, and this group were well prepared for the camp.

Our theme at this camp was “Relationships” with Pete Sorrenson as our speaker. It is important to have a Relationships camp every now and then to remind each generation of teenagers what it is that God has been teaching about relationships. Many of us will remember these kind of camps for all that we were told not to do. I’m pleased to say that this camp had a much more positive focus. 

Pete has been involved in ministry to university students for a number of years, and is well able to see the changing trends in how people relate to each other. His experience and wisdom was evident as he spoke, but also his knowledge of the scriptures and his desire to see the youth of the PCV understand God’s will. His love for God was also evident. 

We learned why it is that we love ‘love’ – something that is made clear in movies and songs of any age. God has created us and God is love, so it is natural that we would love ‘love’. But this leads to the difficult question of why love is so hard and so painful. The fact that love is painful isn’t something we need to explain. We all understand it. So looking back into Genesis chapter 3 we see how that first relationship was damaged, and then see the consequences of that on all of us. 

Looking to Jesus we heard about the one who got relationships right, and from there Pete showed us how we can get them right in following Jesus. Romance was a key aspect of one of these talks.

Recordings of these talks are now one the PYV website. If you had children attending the camp, then we would be pleased if you listened to these talks yourself. It would be good for you to hear what your kids heard and then to talk with them. I think you’ll be encouraged. 

The camp also included a lot of time for activities or free time for campers to run around playing soccer, to play board games & table tennis, to sit under trees talking with friends. It looked like a number of new friendships were formed at this camp too. 

There were two other highlights I want to write about. The first was one evening where the girls and guys went to separate rooms to hear from some of the adults in the camp. Naturally I was in the boys group and we heard from some of our leaders about life and relationships. What was very helpful was having three blokes with different life experience to speak, one married but no kids (dogs don’t count), one married with children, and one single. The feedback from this evening’s events, both for girls and guys, was very positive.

The other was a Q&A evening. We normally have a question box set aside for campers to leave questions which will be answered by some wise and learned people. As these are anonymous, people can feel free to ask some fairly personal questions – and they did. It was a privilege to sit with wise people and seek to answer these questions. 

PYV exists to glorify God by assisting local congregations of the PCV in the development and nurture of youth for the service of Christ Jesus. We know that this mean we want people to know Jesus before they begin to serve him. I am delighted to report that through this camp we had six people come to faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Would you please be praying for these young people?

I should also comment on YouthMETRO. Each year there is a group of youth ministry trainees who are at Summer Camp but are involved in a separate program. These are the YouthMETRO crew. This year we had thirteen trainees who were learning theology with Matt Deroon and evangelism with Nate Barbieri. It was exciting to see this group learning together and forming into a solid friendship group. What was also very exciting was to see them putting their evangelism training into action. This contributed to the young people who did come to faith. 

Summer Camp 2018 will be held at Campaspe Downs Resort near Kyneton, with Toby McIntosh as our speaker. Please put this camp into your church calendars for Dec 27 to Jan 1, and can I also ask you to include it in your church budgets? If you can help some young people get to these camps, you are investing in the next generation.

PYV Summer Camp 2017 – Day Six. New Year’s Day 2018

Just how much sleep did everyone get? Who knows! I know that I was talking to a group of boys a bit before 2.00am assuring them that I would be waking them up in the morning. But while they were packing their stuff at 5.45am, they woke me up! Unintentionally, of course.

Today is the final day of camp, and so it will be a shorter day as we prepare for camp to finish at 2.00pm. But it will be a full day nonetheless.

The final leader's meeting

Our leaders were awake and together at 7.30am, which is a fair effort after a very late night. Why would they do this? I think I’ve already answered that question, but it is just another sign of their desire to serve the teenagers of your church and family.

Breakfast, which was pancakes, was followed by everyone’s favourite activity – the dorm room pack up. At this time at every camp, I wonder what lost property will end up in the PYV office. Will there be any this time? Of course there will (insert grumpy face here). With the pack up mostly done, we headed into our session room for the final worship session of camp.

This included a testimony from one of our YouthMETRO trainees, Celia Yu. Once again, it was a wonderful testimony that was an encouragement for all of us. Which leads me to write about the YouthMETRO trainees. This year we have 13 trainees who have spent the camp time discussing theology with Matt Deroon and evangelism with Nate Barbieri. They arrived as acquaintances and left as friends. We have seen good fruit from YouthMETRO over a number of years. I believe we will also see good fruit from this group too.

YouthMETRO 2018

Pete’s final talk took us back to what we have learned over the camp with short discussions about these topics. These topics have been having an impact on the campers and leaders and it was good to hear some of that being made clear in this session. Please, if you have a child who has attended the camp, please talk with them about the topics of relationships.

After lunch we had our final session which was a chance for us all to say thank you to the camp leaders and, importantly, the camp executive team. These leaders have worked hard for many months to get things ready for camp, and they have worked hard over six days. They deserve more than they have been given.

I hope to have more photos from the camp on the PYV Facebook page by the end of the week. There are a lot of photos to go through and determine which ones to make public. We will also have the photos of the lost property for you to look through. Except for the blue socks. Lost socks get binned.

Thank you for taking the time to read through these blog posts over this week. I have been encouraged by those who have told me they were reading it.

PYV Summer Camp 2017 – Day Five. New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve 2017

Why do we do what we do? There are a number of answers to this, most of them equally good, but one towers above them all. We do camps to lead people to faith in Jesus. And we have seen this happen. Young men and women who have Christian knowledge and families have this week had this turn into a personal faith. Hallelujah!

Where yesterday’s talk was about getting romantic relationships right, today’s talk was about getting friendship relationships right. The book of proverbs was a good place for us to spend this time as there is much to say about friendships here. Some old writers also have some good things to say about friendship. Here’s a good one from Augustine:

In this world two things are essential: a healthy life and friendship.

The study groups were a good place to continue the discussion on friendship by first starting with a list of what friends do and what they don’t do. From there we looked through a number of passages from Proverbs on friendship and created another list. It was positive to see that there was a number of similarities in the lists. We hope that good friendships have been created on this camp, and look forward to seeing them develop over the next few years.

The afternoon included some activities in our groups before a great game of dodgeball with water balloons. It’s a warm afternoon so throwing water balloons at each other is a brilliant idea.

Over the days of camp there has been something else happening which I haven’t recorded in my blog yet, and that is the afternoon prayer meeting. This has been led by Jacob, one of our younger leaders, and has been attended by 20-30 people each afternoon. Some of you know how good it is to hear young people pray and here is where that happens.

Something else that has happened each day, or rather each night, is the Radio Show. Our hosts for the show this year were Kellie McLeod and Hayden Millsteed. They were funny and entertaining and involved the campers each evening. Ryan was also there making sure things worked. Tonight we don’t get to listen to them, but that’s because it’s New Year’s Eve.

Our costume theme this Summer Camp is “Under the Sea” and once again, there were some outstanding costumes. Some were obvious, some took a bit more thought to work out, and some were brilliant. I was going to include a few photos, but you’ll have to wait another day.  

After dinner and some outside time, we enjoyed a trivia night and then a movie. With the “Under the Sea” theme, there are a few films that would fit, and “Finding Nemo” is one of them. It’s so long since I have seen it that I had forgotten most of the storyline. Except the seagulls. It’s hard to forget the seagulls.

In past years we have had a bit of a dance party in the hour or two before midnight. Over recent years we have noticed that the number of people getting involved in this has been reducing. So, daring to do something different, we made a change. This year we began to sing worship songs at 11.45pm. Our final song finished with three seconds to go before midnight, so we were able to celebrate the beginning of the year together as usual.

Then we divided into our study groups to pray together. Some people like to drink to celebrate. Some like to dance. Some like to do other things too. We pray. We worship. We encourage each other.

Friends, if you have been praying for this camp, and if you have been praying that God would glorify himself by transforming the hearts and lives of young people, then your prayers have been answered.

Thank you.