Pre-camp Prep & Leadership Testimony
Written by James
From the setting to the rising sun, for us was about 3-4 hours. Ethan, Chris and I fell asleep with the light, and we awoke to a bright and vibrant day until we looked at the clock and this bright sun soaked morning was actually 4 am. This was 4 and a half hours before our first scheduled activity of the day breakfast.
After falling back asleep in the very early full sunlight, we headed out for breakfast and had bread with various meats, cheeses and vegetables.
Coming into our first full day, we started out with a devotion focused on Psalm 78: 4 - 7 and Deuteronomy 6: 5 - 9; to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and to tell the next generation this and God's glorious deeds.
Our first leaders' session with Pastor Joe from the Lord's Grace Christian Church was on sharing the Gospel in relationship. He reminded us that the Gospel is the most important thing, and that we need to get back to the basics of repentance of sin and reconciling our relationship with Christ. Pastor Joe emphasized the need to understand the importance of the Gospel, its weight, and true message in order to share the Gospel and to do so in relationship along side others.
After this session we convened for lunch of pasta and salad and spent time fellowshipping with the other co-worker team members and leads.
Coming back we played some Ice Breaker Bingo Games where we had to find unique names of people who had done or had some quality on our bingo sheet. As we all scrambled to find people and names we got to know a lot of the rest of the teams pretty quickly, knowing who had been coming the NCCC for 10 years or more, who could bench 100 kg, who liked durian and many other fun facts.
We settled down at this point for our second session of the day focusing on the importance of Testimonies which me and Chris attended while Ethan went to go to the session on for the Youth Ministry teams. For the testimony session, Pastor Joe talked about his own testimony and how he came to faith, and how he was rebellious but how he was led to Jesus, and we had a chance to write down our own testimonies and share them with one another.
After we formulated and share testimonies, we had a chance to meet up with the co-leaders each of us had for our small groups or other duties to plan out sessions and overall structure of the coming group time session and getting to know our small group co-leads for the camp.
Then a dinner of traditional Swedish Fish Balls, baked fish, and salad and rice helped fill our bellies as we prepared for our next session and learnt more about different people from different teams, as all our team tried to sit with new people each time.
Our last session before evening snacks and breaking off to socialize or sleep was "Would You Rather" questionnaire that helped us analyze our knee-jerk reactions to situation in leading small groups (or Youth groups) and then figuring out why. This approach allowed us to discuss the various different modes or mindsets that we operate within when approaching small group or youth leading for discussion groups, which are coming in tomorrow and the coming days.
We may still have jet-lag, and the coffee not able to fully awake us, but yet we are still being molded, shaped, and awakened in a by the power of the Holy Spirit. May we continue to prepare and be prepared by the Holy Spirit to welcome in the campers coming tomorrow, and we ask kindly for you to pray for us!
Prayer Requests:
Jet-Lag-Be-Gone & Readiness to Serve: May we be no longer be out of whack with the Swedish Time Zone and are prepped to meet, greet, and fellowship with the campers arriving.
Safe Travels: May all the campers arriving tomorrow get here safely, smoothly, and uneventfully
Opening Day: May NCCC Camp 2025's opening day be welcoming, fruitful, and full of joy and refreshment for all those attending and serving from; arrival to initial first group time and beyond.
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