Youth Bible Camp 05

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Do you have an anchor for your soul?
About 30 people attended Youth Bible Camp '05 at Journey's End Camp during July. Each one left with a wealth of information to guide them in making their lives sure and steadfast against shipwreck!

The camp was a great experience with an excellent bunch of campers! This is what some of them had to say:

"An awesum camp, It was a real blessing!"

"Thanx for the fun at camp, I loved it"

"It was lots of fun and I learnt lots spiritually and about friendships."

"I found the talks on the anchor topic to be very relevant and easy to understand and really enjoyed the whole thing."

"The camp was heaps of fun! I learned a lot, and painting the chalet was really fun."

"Once again camp has been really good. . . I've learnt so much mentally and physically!"

"I found it very enlightening and am really looking forward to next years camp."

"My favourite thing was being able to communicate and share God with people my own age."

And that's what Youth Bible Camp is all about! — growing closer to Jesus and each other while studying God's Word, learning practical skills, developing friendships for eternity, — oh! and having heaps of fun!

Bible Classes
Cody and Mandy Francis from Washington, USA were this year's guest speakers. During the camp, they shared important messages of anchoring our lives to Jesus.

During morning worship, Mandy talked about Anchors — types of anchors, what anchors we can use, the dangers of false anchors, making sure our anchor is connected, and the final harbour where we can anchor safely!

At the first Bible class each day Cody proved how the Bible is so sure and steadfast and then he gave tips on how to study it to get the information it has to make our lives well anchored! Also we learnt the prayer is an important line of communication to God!

The second Bible class was real practical; we got into our Bible's and applied some of what we had been learning! First we studied what the Bible claims about itself and then Cody gave some pretty tough passages to fathom. We all sat round in groups chewing over the texts as well as our pencils! But it's exciting to compare scripture with scripture and see that it does make sense!

Evening worships were real good, Cody told us all about shipwreck and especially how to avoid it. There are so many winds of difficulties but if we have ambition and aim we can sail through them rather than let then destroy us. One especially interesting evening was about how to avoid shipwreck in our family, the best time to avoid a ruined home is to enter into relationships real carefully. Cody gave some excellent tips on this. The last worship was very relevant, it was a serious topic on how to avoid shipwreck—and that might mean we have to change our way of life!

Sabbath
Sabbath is always a busy day but lots if fun at YBC. This year we travelled about 30 minutes to the Church in Oxford. We exploded the numbers there. The morning was one to be remembered. We had lots of singing and Mark, a local person took a good Sabbath school on controlling our thoughts and being in God's Word. It really linked into our anchor theme well because our thoughts are one of the winds that will blow us onto the rocks for shipwreck!

Cody took the service from our theme text in Hebrews where it talks about hope being our anchor. He especially brought out about the hope of the second coming of Jesus.

After church, we had lunch in the hall then walked to Karadean Court, a rest-home just around the block from the church. We shared a selection of songs we had been practicing during the camp. Some campers formed special groups to do items as well as every one singing together. Then we went to Rangiora to another elderly-folks home to do the same. The people there certainly did enjoy the time we took to be with them. And when we shook their hands afterwards, they were beaming from ear to ear!

That evening after Sabbath we had a special visitor come. None of the campers knew anything about it but he gave us a real interesting slide show on Antarctica. He has been down there recently preparing a teaching resource for schools. It's a really COOL place! He called his show "A nIce Experience".

Activities
The activities were good fun and had practical application too. The main one was a revamp of a chalet on the campground. On the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday we worked on making it like new again inside and landscaping the outside. To start with it was 'pretty gross' on the inside, every thing was painted white with bright green window frames and awful curtains. The table was wobbly, and the chest of draws looked pretty old. There was one funny light shade and the pull cords to turn the lights on were worn.

By the time we were finished the walls were a nice creamy-peach colour with slightly darker trim round the doors and windows. We repainted the ceiling white and put a nice ornamental strip around the top, which made it look real good. While some were painting others made nice new curtains with matching mattress covers, others made pelmets for over the cutrains and, others restored the furniture. Three windows also needed replacing and we put better carpet in and two matching light shades. We made new frames for the mirrors and made to two nice pictures for the walls with our theme text on them. Outside, a team built some sturdy steps and generally leveled and tidied the ground up. Afterwards it looked real great.

We also did a few other activities and games, as well as going for walks. One game that was real popular was '4 on the couch'. Its heaps of fun where every one gets their names mixed up and using the new names you have to re-shuffle every one while the girls try and get 4 girls on the couch and the boys try to get 4 boys.

Meals
All the food was real good, but especially the evening meals! Each night we had food representing a different country, the first night we had spaghetti and pizza with Italian flags. The second night we had a British flag in our Baked bean pie, peas and spud! Next was Japanese with tofu, stir-fry, and seaweed and rice wraps. Friday night was American with Apple pie, waffles and maple syrup. On Saturday night we had Fijian flags with banana cooked in coconut cream and dried pineapple and mango, and fresh coconut. The last night was Mexican with tortillas and tacos with beans, there were chilies on the table too and it was funny to see every one running to the sink for drinks where they tried to cool the heat down!

Inbetween
The first morning started of with a real hard frost, some of the poor North Islanders thought it wasn't much fun, but they all did survive and got stocked up with more blankets and hot water bottles.

Each day we had our share of duties to do. These included serving, doing dishes, keeping the fires stocked up and making sure the toilets were stocked with paper and clean. Walks to the top of the hill were an essential at times; the cell phone reception is not very good at the camp! All the telecom phones would beep when we got there but the poor vodaphone users had to walk about another ½ hour for reception!

Everyone decided the fire was a real good place to spend time together, and there were three over-keen fire stokers to keep it going and the water boiling!

After evening worship each night we enjoyed a drink and short social time together before heading off to bed at about 9:00 with lights out (and theoretically mouths shut) by 9:30.

Throughout the camp, campers had the benefit of mixing with other Christian young people. They gained new friendships and learnt from each other's experiences. Prayerfully these friendships will go on into eternity and the lessons learnt will benefit their lives here and in the future!

Photos
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Notes for Campers!
• Recordings of most of the meetings are available. Check below for what is available.

• We got the following note from a person at the Oxford Church showing appreciation for the efforts we did there:

"I just thought I would drop you a line to say thanks. It was so good to have the youth group at church on Sabbath and it was great to see their enthusiasm, especially with the music. I know that our church was once again blessed with your participation and I pray that the visit to the elderly was a successful witness in demonstrating what dedicated people and the grace of God can achieve with our young people, well done to you all."

• If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on the camp, email us or be in touch with Damon via email or txt 027 424 8891.

Recordings of Meetings
We have Cody's evening worship Shipwreck series and the Sabbath sermon recorded. Re-live and be re-inspired by the messages shared during the camp. Why not share these important messages with friends who were not able to attend or who you want to witness to?

Shipwreck 1 - Mastering Difficulties (12th July, Tuesday evening worship)
Y301 In this message Cody uses the story of Paul's shipwreck on the way to Rome to
illustrations that we must over come difficulties rather than avoid them and let
them take us in a contrary path.

Shipwreck 2 - Aim & Ambition (13th July, Wednesday evening worship)
Y302 This message shows that we must have aims and ambition in order to keep in the
right direction and keep from being distracted and lead to destruction.

Shipwreck 3 - Following God's Messenger (14th July, Thursday evening worship)
Y303 Continuing to use the story of Paul's shipwreck, Cody shows the importance of
following counsel especially in regards to our personal relationships.

Shipwreck 4 - Promises of the World (17th July, Sunday evening worship)
Y304 The need to be careful of false promises! When all seems to be going well, and
there is promise of smooth sailing, we must be careful that we are not allured from
our right pathway. Uses the example of Solomon.

The Anchor of the Soul (16th July, Sabbath morning service)
Y305 A Study of Hebrews 6:18-20, showing that Hope is the great anchor of our soul.
Especially the great hope of Jesus soon coming!

The Day of the Lord (19th July, Evening meeting in Wellington)
Y306 A study of two groups, both desiring the coming of the Lord.
One a profession, but lacking the righteousness of Christ.
The other a profession, plus having the righteousness of Christ.

Giants in the Land (22nd July, Evening meeting in Auckland)
Y307 How would have we reacted to the report of the spies who came back from Canaan?
We are each facing giants in our own lives each day, and how are we reacting to them?
Are we Joshua and Calebs, or dear we think we could be listening to the ten others.

Receiving the Rain (23rd July, Sabbath morning service in Auckland)
Y308 We often hear about the receiving of the early rain, but what is the preparation needed?

One message per tape or CD. $4.00 per message or $3.50 each for more than 10 recordings

All messages together on one disk in MP3 format $8.00

Let us know if you would like Tapes or CDs or MP3

For further information contact us.