Day 6 - July 25: The Long Day

The sun at this latitude begins to come up around 4:30 in the morning, and doesn’t set until 10:00. This makes for lots of opportunities for fun, and very long days. Such was today, were the leaders met for a morning lesson from our very own Jeremy around 7:30 before waking up the kids at 8:00. After a quick breakfast, we had our first worship/teaching session with Derek using Disney’s Toy Story as a theme. Because its a bit different for him to speak to the kids in English, he is only teaching in Welsh which makes the sermon quite difficult to follow. We try to nod approvingly and laugh appropriately, and we are learning as many words as possible, but we all have a L O N G way to go! During the first worship, Tomos Roberts-Young, a young man who was saved after camp last year, gave his testimony and did a fabulous job, and we celebrated Hannah Mac’s 22nd birthday! After a bit of free time, we immediately went into our teams of small groups of 2-3 boys with a couple of adult leaders. We used a series of questions developed by Derek and it generated a fantastic conversation in each group. In my group, we had a great discussion on whether we could earn our way to heaven with things like helping the poor, going to chapel, etc. We then looked at what the Bible has to say, and quickly realized there was nothing we could do on our own and that we desperately needed help because we are ALL sinners who have fallen outside of God’s design and need Christ. This generated some wonderful conversation and really gave the team a different perspective than they may have fully understood before. After small groups, these same teams enjoyed a Coleg y Bala scavenger hunt and lunch before meeting together for the first boys & girls time. For the boys, Jeremy Smith led a great lesson on what it means to be a man of God, while Tracy led a conversation on knowing we’re loved and understanding the reality of True Beauty. We continued the incredibly full agenda with a touch rugby tournament, featherball teams, a walk to central Bala for ice cream and back to the college for dinner. As you can tell, we’ve fit more into a camp day than I can possible relate, and the description above is only prelude to big activities of the day: team challenges. Each of the four teams spent the afternoon in 2 of the challenges (the remaining 2 will be completed tomorrow), and either developed a team poster (arts & crafts), built a bridge and egg parachute (engineering), performed a set of cultural songs (performance) or put together a play (movie). These went really well and were great fun for each team. Everyone was tired, but the final event of the night was still to come and would turn out to be one of the most remarkable experiences of our lives. After a few worship songs, our very own Nick Johnson got to present the Gospel at our nightly “Epilogue.” At the close, Nick ask for bowed head, closed eyes and a show of hands for those who wanted to give their lives to Christ or speak to someone about doing so. We prayed and raised our eyes, as Derek asked those who raised a hand to step out from the chapel to the sitting room next door. To everyone’s great astonishment, 38 of the 41 students stood from their chairs and marched out of the room to participate in counseling!! Now, of course, some number of these turned out to be children who saw the crowd or felt the pull of friends, but the work of the Lord was powerful and evident for all to see. This, obviously, posed an issue for our leadership team - one we were thrilled to address. Eventually, they split the girls up into two groups and walked them through another presentation of the Gospel with specific actions they could take if they were ready to give their lives to Christ. The boys had a enough for one-on-one conversations, and many - to their credit - understood enough to know they wanted to think about the decision a bit more. Amidst all this, a bat got into the dorm area and caused quite a stir; apparently, even the local wildlife wanted to come forward for a decision. (A “raiding party” made up of Aled Lloyd, Eistyn ap Hywel and others safely secured the bat, returned it to the outside and attempted to settle down the overly-excited children). At the end of the long, long night, we new of at least eight children giving their lives to Christ as their Lord and Savior…only our exhaustion kept us from a night-long celebration, but we understand that the angels carried on in our absence. Many others are close or want understand a bit more before making a final decision, and we expect another blessing tonight when Jeremy Smith offers the Gospel in his Epilogue.