so this last weekend the beautiful val (now tbsv but hoping and praying she gets over the sickly superquick) and i were uber privileged to be a part of the formerly claremont meths church, now combo churches, camp simply titled ‘Go’

we were meant to be part of a national vineyard youth camp (in bloem) which for various reasons didn’t work out and so we transferred all our guys to the mizpah campsite camp in grabouw and joined with cmc and pinelands meths and claremont congregational and camps bay united (life something something church as they are now called) and a huge amount of truly amazing leadery types including a bunch of people from my past who it was incredible to connect with again

it was a great camp with a lot of energy and fun games and challenges (the two-people-hold-both-hands-while-the-third-person-whips-the-extra-large-shirt-from-the-one-person-to-the-other relay a definite highlight) and personal injuries [took a quarter of my big toe nail off somehow friday nite during a high-paced ching chong cha (paper, rock, scissors) session and then headbutted the ground when diving for an ultimate frisbee long goal (didn’t make it, but did make two others and my team – the teal (it IS a colour) team won that one) and a few other minor scrapes and bruises]

three things stand out immediately:

[1] the one nite we watched a movie called ‘to save a life’ which i had to watch the nite before (all 2 plus hours of it) to assess the cheese factor (quite possibly the best christian movie i’ve watched) and so that i could lead the ministry session afterwards – had a sense God wanted leaders to step forward in front of the campers and identify issues from the movie (suicide, abortion, cutting, divorce, loneliness, rejection) that they had struggled with first or secondhand and was blown away by the openness and vulnerability shown by so many of them – really made a difference in terms of teens responding and i believe God started some huge recovery work that nite (which was early on in camp which was great)

[2] a session we had under the tree which the leaders added into the program cos relationship stuff had come up so much so quickly and so they asked tbv and i to lead a session on relationships so did a ten minute few points and then opened it to questions – and also went back in the afternoon for anyone still wanting to ask questions and took it a little further in the smaller group context – really covered a lot of ground and God was so in that too which was great

[3] the phrase ‘here am i, send me’ from eugene’s last talk just stood out and shouted at me – it should be ‘here i am’ englishly, but i rather like the dramatic effect the ‘here am i’ brings – i know the message, i preach it A LOT, but i’m still really not sure i fully get it… and i returned home with a far huge drive and hunger to really be getting it more.

cos i absolutely mean it, there is no doubt in my mind about that – God, i will go wherever You call me, i will do whatever You want me to do…

the question for me is whether i will hear His voice when He speaks on the matter if it doesn’t look like what i, or we, wanted to hear…