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CAMPING WITH GOD
Article Dated : Sunday, 14 Feb 2010 00:08
Base : YWAM Newcastle - The Youth Street Base
How do you start an update about two weeks of camping with 28 people hearing sweet stuff from God about their identity? I will start like this: The first day only the men went out to set up the camp. Pushing a trailer full of gear for 30 minutes then getting lost on the second trip made for a strangely fun start to the day, followed by man time around the camp fire where we played the game of throwing hot coals and then off to sleeping in close quarters. On the second day the women arrived carrying their own bags; so the men folk brought another trailer load in of all the food we were going to eat for the two weeks. So now we are all settled in but some of the males wanted more hunting and fire man time, however it was awesome to be all together once more. The beginning week was Character of God with the great and wise Robert Russell. He spoke of Gods plurality and shared stories from his upbringing about how with the wrong glasses on we can look at God in the wrong light. Being in the bush away from electricity and running drinking water was new for some and an adventure for others. Every day we would boat into the nearby resort to fill up on drinking water, buy ice for our coolers, and get rid of our rubbish to attract less goannas and dingos. Although we still saw at least 3 goannas a day, usually during lectures and the dingos would come out under the cover of darkness and freak certain ones of us out. We got to spend a lot of time just chilling out with God and hearing from him and seeing certain character traits of his through the environment around us. His creativity, his attention to detail and the care within that, his exactness and through that the Esther like moments of our lives that are perfectly set up. During one on ones we would walk up the trail or stick our feet in the lake and discuss where God was calling us for outreach and how seeing God in the correct light changes our whole attitude toward him. We water skied and biscuited and swam and sat in the lake and read and after Robert had left to go back home Sanerive (our DTS School Leader) and one of our good friends, Sam Street took over the teaching and spoke about humanism and Gods different names. We also spent a while worshipping together and just singing out songs that were on our hearts and praying out things we wanted to speak to God. We interceded for our outreach locations in the lake and then yelled aloud what was on our hearts. Towards the end of the week our base director David Stephenson and his lovely family joined us out on the lake and took a few more of us out for some fun with his boat. We also got to celebrate his birthday with him during our second week which was amazingly cool. Second week of camp was father heart of God. This week is huge for a lot of us on DTS. God loves being the perfect father for us and to us and sometimes our earthly authority figures can taint who we see our heavenly father as and therefore how we see ourselves in his eyes. We discussed who God is to us and how that relates to our dignity. We had times of one on one time with God to hear from him about our identity. We also spent a lot of time on the lake in the dark screaming out things we wanted God to know and who we wanted to be. We were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Shawn and Sarah Cothran who lead us out with an amazing time of worship and hung out a lot. They spoke absolute truth into a lot of us. Thanks guys! A big part of father heart week is openness and brokenness. A time we get to just let God in to heal us and breath life into us. One certain student went into the bush by himself and came back and said “I think God wants to break me down and then rebuild me” and that’s exactly what happened for many of us. God convicted us of things to share and we found a lot of forgiveness and dignity and healing. Prior to this we spent a night telling our ten minute life story, this brought the whole school together and united us in love. On our last night we wrote out letters to God our father, then in the morning we packed up our campsite. Thus began the epic journey home. Including the human assembly line to fill the boat, the lost glasses, the trailer push and the snake shovel. We left Lewis house a group of men and women looking for God and his calling over us and we returned anew joyfilled excited bunch of Gods children. That much closer to being the people God saw when he created us. Big shout out to Sam, Shawn and Sarah, the Stevos, and all the drivers and visitors. We love you all a lot. January Summer Plus DTS 2010.
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