Overnight Camp-out with the Sunday School class of 8-10 yrs

In our church, Christian Community, El Hatillo, during the first 6 months of the year, celebrate one Over-night camp-out per Sunday School class (4 classes of around 15-25 students each, ages 8-13 yrs. boys and girls separate).

We invite the entire class to come to our house Saturday morning and spend the night in tents camped out on our lawn. The teachers serve as camp counselors and I serve as the speaker and camp director, and Alfredo is in charge of Quiet Time and the final reflection on Sunday morning before we walk to our church, just in time for Sunday morning worship. I prepare the video clip (which you can see below) to show the church family what God (and their kids) did over the weekend. This will be our third year doing this and the kids look forward to this season with excitement. We take the older students, 14-18 years old on their own retreat to a nearby camp. 

They enjoy the activities like:

• Swimming in our little pond
• Playing games with the parachute
• Getting closer as a SS class
• Being taught in depth on one particular subject, this year the theme is: Friendship with Jesus and  others.
• Taking a night hike all by yourself in the dark
• Watching the stars
• Sleeping in tents with their friends
• Getting up at 5am to swim and become a member of the "Polar Bear Club"

These next blogs will show you some more images and details about what we teach and hope to accomplish. For now, I invite you to enjoy the 3:45min. video from our first Camp-Out with girls 8-10 years. 

Overnight Camp-outs with our church's Sunday School classes: Feb. class of 8-10 yr. girls

The theme of this year's series of Overnight Camp-outs is "Your friendship with Jesus and with others." We had in attendance 12 of the 15 girls in that age bracket (8-10 years old) so we were very pleased with the turn-out.

As you will see from the video clip below (3:45 min.), the highlights are swimming in our little pond, playing with our German Shepherd dog, Fofer, sleeping in a tent, playing games with the parachute, cooking your meals over the campfire, taking a night hike (alone in the dark woods!), and several said they enjoyed the Bible teaching on friendships.

"Overnight Camp-Out" with the Sunday School classes of 7-12 years

You can view it directly on Youtube (7:20) http://youtu.be/OnKwS3XINsA

There are camp programs that you really work hard on preparing and packing full of details. But during this brief camp of 24 hours (Saturday from 10am to Sunday 10am) we created a space on Saturday night and the Holy Spirit took control of the program!

Alfredo gave a short message on "Key decisions" using the life of Elijah as an example and then Victor gave his testimony about his decision to not say bad words. It was like his confession set off a round of confessions from his peers and the Holy Spirit prompted them to confess their sins and make public their repentance to:

• Not say bad words.
• Not listen to songs with inappropriate lyrics.
• Not talk back to their parents, teachers and grandparents.
• Not disobey their parents.

Kids even went up front to share Bible stories and to exhort one another to take God seriously. All us leaders took a bad seat to God and to the campers themselves! It felt like a revival! After a while Alfredo made an altar call for those who hadn't made a decision to follow Jesus and nine young boys literally rushed to the front to pray! There was a party in heaven to celebrate those 9 lives dedicated to Jesus!

What did we do before this little revival?

• We played in the pool
• We had "An epic battle" with our homemade blow guns, in the pouring down rain!
• Every single camper learned to make their own fire
• We cooked "S'mores" and roasted marshmallows, each on his own campfire

What did we do after this little revival?

• We slept in tents... for a few hours!
• We (well, not everyone!) joined the Polar Bear club-- they were in the pool at 5:40AM!
  
• We each learned to have our own Quiet Times!

Finally, we celebrated what God did and will continue to do in these young boys lives!

"Overnight Camp-Out" with one of the Sunday School classes from our church

I want to share the details of our Institute for Forming Instructors in Argentina, but I don’t want to lose the opportunity to share photos about an event we just had this weekend.

Valerie (a.k.a. idea-maker) came up with the idea to invite her Sunday School class (girls 10-12 yrs) to our home for a camp-out. This idea was well-received and soon all the other Sunday School classes wanted to have their own Overnight Camp-out (Campa-Fogata) and so over the next several months we’ll celebrate five events.

Their testimonies from this Saturday-Sunday (Feb. 18-19) tell the stories:

“I have had Quiet Times before since my parents have taught me but this time was different. This time I felt like God spoke to me and told me that He has plans for me and that He wants me to trust Him. I felt like a princess, I even put a little crown on and I started to dance and sing to Him. Maybe the other girls thought I was a bit crazy dancing and singing but it didn’t matter because He’s my audience!”

Valerie Umaña-Anderson

“When they told us we’d have a night hike—and all alone—I was afraid. When Lisa took me out to start, she offered to pray with me first. I confessed that I had three fears: Fear of darkness, fear of being alone, fear of death. We put off those fears and put on God’s peace and courage.

It was amazing, at the end of my hike, I felt so free! So full of peace! I cried for joy and I even went on the hike again, this time with no light at the end. No more fears, God took them away!

Keren Elvir

Enjoy the 4 min. video that shows you the story…. Click on this link to view it from youtube if you can’t see it from the blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we_mXer8jbo

One conclusion I have come to is that God does marvelous things when (a) we create a time and space to be free from the distractions of daily life, (b) we create a community to help and encourage growth, (c) we work with intentionality.

What have you observed about how God works? (share with me your observations by clicking on the “comments link”)