It seems to have gone too fast to be true but we are beginning our final camp week today with FCA. Later this week we will be serving at the National Bible Bowl, which is also held on campus. Our last engagement together is this coming Sunday morning at College Wesleyan Church here in Marion where we have the opportunity to lead Sunday morning praise and worship music.
Unfortunately as you may have noticed, “blogging” this summer has been a bit of a challenge for us since we have very inconsistent Internet access/time to blog. However, now at IWU, we will be able to catch up within the week!
In other news, so far we have a green light to record our music in the new chapel at IWU, a multimillion-dollar facility with cutting edge sound system and recording equipment. With that in mind, we will do our best to keep you updated about that and hopefully get some our music to you that is quite a bit more quality than the last two rough live recordings we posted.
So finally, after all of the catch up and introduction, I would like to tell you all about our week at Bay Shore camp (now two weeks ago).
We arrived at Bay Shore and were happy to be reunited with our friends from last year. Kent Fishel was again the speaker for the camp and many of the counselors returned, some of whom we have kept in contact with fore the entire year. Monday morning we lead in worship for the counselors and staff and went around the room sharing Scriptures and areas of our lives where we had seen God working over the past year. The maturity and spiritual adeptness of the counselors at Bay Shore is a rare and beautiful thing to be see and was a privilege to be a part of. The strength of the staff was revealed during the week, and is a big part of why I believe we saw such spiritual growth in the kids at the camp this year and last year. Godly examples speaking hope and truth to people brings change!
Our team made up a big part of the male counselor team. Michael and myself were with the juniors, Aaron with seniors, Denny with sophomores and Chris and Andrew with freshmen. During our cabin time this week we were all able to witness young men open up their lives in ways that some of them had never done before. We were able to speak truth, challenge and encouragement into their lives and watch them grow tremendously from day one to our goodbyes.
Bay Shore stands out for many things, one of them being “Puttin on the Hits”, an event where the kids perform songs of their choice, acting them out or dancing to the songs. The performances are judged and the winner decided. This years winning group performed Lay ‘em Down by Need to Breathe and may have possibly been my group ;) The song pictured an impassable river, which lead to a church and place of hope, demonstrated with a preacher and gospel choir. On the other side of the bridge, weary travelers approached the bridge (a sizable piece of plywood balanced on 4 cinder blocks set across a giant blue tarp fore a river) attempting to get across. However with each try the audience realized that the reason they cannot cross the bridge was the packs on their backs label with things like fear, lust, anger etc. Once the travelers chose to lay down their burdens, they are able to cross the bridge with ease. It is a powerful song that speaks to the bondage of sin and the freedom of life in Christ. The songs are a blast for the kids to perform as they use their imaginations and creativity to come up with something beautiful (another one of the performed songs). Each of the songs were done incredibly and were powerful reminders of our life in Christ.
The week was full to the brim and close to every minute was scheduled for us so we nearly always had somewhere to be. However, our team really enjoyed the week and the intentionality the camp put into each moment of the day. We went to the beach of lake Huron, witnessed the baptism of several campers, went to a pool, taught skills classes (ie car care, worship team, creative writing, self defense, soccer etc), enjoyed the snack shack, participated in morning teaching classes as well a did a ton of other things.
Camp fire Praise and Worship
One of the most special things we did all week was taking communion with the group. We listened that night as 15-20 different kids stood up and gave a testimony to what God was doing in their lives that week. We saw real change begin to occur in the kids lives from past sins, struggles, and doubts as they turned their gaze to the Glorious One who saves and redeems. Taking communion with one another was a great reminder of what Christ did for us as individuals as well as for us as the Body. The love and forgiveness of God is a sweet sweet thing to people with broken and hurting lives. The grace of God is great and we saw its evidences this week!
God has been blessing us and watching over us this entire summer and we are excited to have one more week to minister to kids with the team. Please continue to pray and lift up our team, that we have strength and motivation to pursue holiness and faith so that as Christ fills us up, we can then pour out into the kids lives. Pray for the kids that their hearts are open and that God does a great transforming work in every one of our lives!
Sincerely,
Revolution
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