Extreme Make-Over—Camp Edition

Summer camps are unique places where God does amazing work in students’ lives. It is always interesting to watch how the week unfolds and how God works in students’ hearts.

Most urban Canadian students tend to be pressurized and distracted. They are pressurized by school, sports, part-time jobs, and parental demands. (Can you imagine? Some parents expect their kids to clean their rooms, do their homework, and even sit down with the family for meals!) They live with lots of distractions, many of them electronic: iPods, TV, Facebook, video games, and cell phones. Just yesterday I was speaking with a dad who told me that his daughter is sending 9000 text messages a month! Do the math. That is 300 texts a day. If she sleeps 8 hours a night that is 18.75 texts an hour or one every 3.2 minutes. Talk about distracted!

Weekend retreats can accomplish so much in a student’s life because they take breaks from those pressures and distractions for a couple of days. Students are given space to decompress, have fun, and think about important matters of their souls. The awesome thing about summer camp is students experience that release for a whole week and as the week goes by you can almost see God at work.

This summer was no exception! The first week of the summer I spoke at Camp Qwanoes on Vancouver Island. It is one of the premier camps in Canada and I have had the privilege of speaking at that camp for the past ten summers. Every year that I go back I run into students who were present one of the previous years. Some take the time to let me know what God did in their lives the last week we were together. This year it was Sarah*. I remembered her as a deeply depressed young lady. She’d worn a long sleeve hoodie which she kept pulled over her jet black hair, hiding her face. She walked with her head down and if she spoke with you she rarely would look up to make eye contact. Half-way through the week I made a point of connecting with her. As we talked I asked some gentle, but difficult-to-evade questions. She admitted that she wore the hoodie to cover up the scars and wounds she had up and down her arms from cutting, so people would leave her alone. She was like an abused puppy, and it made me weep for her. But Sarah* accepted Jesus the last day of camp!

I was stunned when I saw Sarah this year. She looked radically different. The hoodie was gone. She was wearing a short sleeve shirt. Her hair was no longer dyed jet black. She walked with her head held high and she was looking people in the eye when they spoke to her! It was an amazing transformation from the inside out! She was back at camp in the leader training program! Her year had not been perfect but Jesus had been healing her heart.

Sarah is a great example of what we are about at Straight Talk. We believe when a person’s heart is changed by encountering the living Jesus, their whole life is changed too. Thank you for giving so that we can continue to be a part of God changing hearts and lives!

*Name has been changed

What a great Sunday!

This past Sunday I was asked to speak to the Jr. & Sr. Highs at Westside Kings Church. They have been doing a series on the life of Jesus with their students. They wanted me to talk about Jesus death. Thanksgiving is a perfect weekend to talk about Jesus sacrifice for us. As we planned how the morning would take place we decided we would finish with a video that would beautifully transition from the talk to a communion time. There was an amazing sense of awe and God's presence. The best part is just before communion the students were given a chance to invite Jesus to be the forgiver and leader of their lives, one student responded and gave his life to Jesus!

I love that I get to do what I get to do!

This could change everything!

This past weekend I was speaking to a group of students from Bethany Chapel. It was a fantastic weekend. The plan was to camp out in tents. (Thank you God for a very comfortable trailer!) There were 45 Jr. High and Sr. High students attendance.

I met with their youth pastor a week before the event to talk about where his students were spiritually and what kinds of things he was thinking he would like to see addressed. Most of his students are believers and one of the things he was hoping they would gain from of the weekend was a desire to see their friends become Jesus followers too.

On Saturday night I spoke about the need to talk to our friends about our faith and give them opportunities to discover the grace of Jesus for themselves.

Before the weekend was over two students spoke with me independently about their desire to share their relationship with Jesus with their friends.

Some might think "Big deal!" But I say “That is a huge deal, in fact this could change everything.” Statistics indicate that more than 80% of people come to faith in Jesus before their 18th birthday! Students are living in one of the most spiritually fertile parts of our culture.

I know of a fantastic pastor who, if it were not for two friends who worked with him in Canadian Tire back when he was in High School, would never have come to faith. He grew up in a family that had no faith at all. He had been watching their lives for some time and was just wishing they would invite him to one of the youth events at their church. Because they took a risk and invited him, he is a believer and is influencing many others to follow Jesus.

God spoke to a number of students about a bunch of things but for me the most exciting is reaching out to our friends with their faith. With their new-found desire to see their friends come to know Jesus, only God knows whose lives will be changed for eternity and how far the ripple of their little act of obedience will go!