The Campfire June Crew – An Exciting leadership program in Colombia
By Judah Rath
Campfire Youth: This summer we ran our weekend camp program for 18–30-year-olds for the 4th time. We studied Jesus and the Demoniac of the Geresenes together, and it was a blast. Judah oversaw Campfire mostly by himself, since Jessie was on maternity leave, and this was a significant challenge. Thanks to amazing support from our growing leadership team the weekend was a success, but the experience was difficult for him, and only emphasizes the need for us to put a succession plan into action. We want to build a project that can outlive us and keep on bearing fruit, so we need to make real strides towards self-sustainability.
Campfire June had a lot of new participants, and we saw the impact that God was making on the youth, especially during the Saturday worship night. We are praying that the youth returned home from camp with a renewed excitement for God and desire to follow Jesus in their regular lives.
Campfire Teen: Campfire TEEN, our program for 12–17-year-olds, ran for the 3rd time. We faced some difficult logistical challenges but saw some beautiful moments during the camp. We had a large group of participants come from Monteria, a city four hours away by car, and we were pleased to discover that they were blown away by the experience. Despite the unique challenges that this camp brought for Judah and the team, God was not absent, and if anything, his presence was actually more tangible.
We studied together the story of Zacchaeus and learned to see how Jesus cares for us more deeply than our mistakes want us to believe. With the REACH team as our leaders for the camp, we got to discuss and dig into this story with a multinational and diverse group of youth.
REACH: We ran the REACH program in partnership with Camp IAWAH for the second year running. This year, we enjoyed the support of two leaders from Colombia, who modeled Colombian to Canadian cultural engagement and crossing the language barrier for our youth. These two leaders, Hernan and Alejandra, were an amazing and necessary help in both recruiting and preparing the youth, and in leading the program. We were also joined by Sofi, a bilingual leader from Colombia, who helped extensively in engaging the youth bilingually; she became an essential piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the program. These leaders, plus Sharon from Canada and I formed the REACH leadership team. We walked with our youth in three weeks of hiking, training, Bible studies, volunteering at ministries and leading Campfire.
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