In an unexpected way, I was asked to come and help with Adventure camp, which our own church was doing for LIFT. It is a new style of camp that we want to try out, which is focused more on discipleship. We were excited to see how this type of camp would work, and I was excited to be asked to take part in it as a small group leader. I admit I was a little scared since I just got done with English camp one day before things started to happen for this camp. I knew that God would give me the strength.
This camp had a totally different spiritual battle that I had not really seen before. The camp was not just Christian students, but half were non-christians also. They knew it was a Christian camp, but wanted to come and check it out anyway. It was many of these non-christian students who were the ones under spiritual attack. We had a few girls tell us how their boyfriends threatened them not to come to our camp. Especially threatened them that bad things would happen to them if they converted to Christians or that they would break up with them if they took this belief. Also a couple of the guys were physically threatened by friends. If they would convert to Christianty, they would be physically threatened everyday when they came back home. I know it sounds crazy, but this is the reality that our students face. The students trusted us enough to talk to us about it.
Even with all of this oppression, God moved in amazing ways through out of camp. One guy, who has dark forces working in him, found peace in the end of the week. Students were asking so many spiritual questions. Christian students were repenting of things in their lives. The whole camp ended with a prayer walk and a presense of God that cannot be described. God came and meet us all where we were at.
I had cool small group of girls. It was heart breaking to hear of the things that they have gone through and what they are facing today. It was great to love them as an older brother along with my small group partner Sarah. It was cool to slow down and take time just to pray and read the Bible together. We had an awesome team from the states, which was from Buckhead Church, Atlanta. We look forward to them returning next year for Adventure Camp.
I don't know what will happen, but God brought a new group of students into our ministry at Risttee with LIFT. We are excited to see so many new faces. We are excited to hear from Christian students that they had been waiting for a camp like this for so long. We are excited to continue to develop this camp for the future as we need to develop the next steps of helping to make disciples that make disciples.