We organized this camp as a part of our missions work in our traditional Reformed Church in Romania with many nominal Christians. We consider this mission important for reaching youth who formally completed their Confirmation of faith (at 14-16 years old), but after this do not attend church and don’t demonstrate an interest in knowing Jesus and serving Him. But these young people are open to come to a camp where they think they will have a good time together with Christian young people, and so they can be reached with the gospel. This camp mission is also very helpful to young people who are interested in coming closer to Jesus Christ and knowing Him better, but secular life distracts them and hinders them in going deeper in the Christian faith.
Every evening we shared the gospel based on the Bible verse which was shared at the morning for each participant for the silent time with God. The youths were opened every evening to hear God’s word, and in the feedbacks they wrote, that they got a lot of strenghtening and encouragement, and knowed God better.
In the morning we hold lectures regarding the main topic: our heritage from our parrents and other ancestors. This detailed how is influenced our actuelle thinking, and behavior from the mentality of our parrents, grandparrents, and the modells which we gathered from they. We discussed about the Mothers, Fathers, about wounds which we got by their behavior, how can we this forgive to be free from them with the help our God. The youth appreciated very well this discussions, because they felt this topics very actuell. They were very active, and in the feedbacks they thanked for this topics.
The small groups to talk about their experiences in faith were very good, and the pastoral care was expected from the youth. We were three pastors in the camp, and every day was pastoral care. With some of the youth we were discoussing during the trips, on the way, with others at the camp fire. Some of them cames to us for pastoral care in the free time, in the afternoon. At the end they thanked for paying attention to their problems and questions. Within others I had a pastoral talk with a boy, who will start his first year at the theological seminary. We talked about faith, God, relationship with God, his family very deeply. He told me, that he prayed loudly before others first in this camp, and he was strengthed here to take his belief in Jesus openly before all people.
The trips to the mountaintops and peaks provides wonderful wiew of the nature, so we could admire the majesty of God’s creation. The majesty of the creation in harmony fulfilled our hearts, and setted us to praise the Lord.
The sport activities, workshops and other programs were loved from both, boys and girls, and we makes soccer competition, ping-pong competition, and volley parties too. Finally we honoured the winners.
As we evaluated the camp, the finally statement was: God gives us a very big blessing in this camp, He was with us in all, and in spite of all our fallibility He blessed the whole camp, He gives us a very good weather, He protected us during the trips on the rocks and over the precipices and clefts, sport activities and in all we done. The bigest gift was, that God’s word sound with power, the songs too, and youths were open for receive God the wole week. We praise the Lord for this, and our hearts it’s full with thankfullness for the whole camp.
