Hopes

It's exactly 6 months to Youth Camp '08 :) and this is a short (or not so short) personal reflection on my hopes for this year's camp.

What do you expect when you go to Camp?
When everyone starts talking about it and everywhere you turn there always seems to be someone wearing a camp t-shirt, or in the midst of last-minute packing and ticking off on the checklist, do you wonder what will happen in those anticipated days? Do you make a mental list of what you'd like to see happen?


I do.
Just as I have my hopes for Youth Camp '08.

I hope in the birth of something extraordinary.
No one should go to Camp and expect nothing to happen, for God loves to make things happen. I want to experience something great, something that leaves me standing speechless in amazement at the awesomeness of my God. I hope that for you too.

I hope great friendships will be made.
With every Camp I attend, I make more friends. My circle becomes wider, and I once again realise that there are other people outside my own little world. This year, I hope for nothing different. I hope I'll form new friendships and strengthen old ones, and that I'll see that there are other people that need encouragement, a hug or even just a smile.

I hope that I will learn more of myself.
At the end of Camp, when the bus rumbles down the road, bringing me back home to once again settle into the daily routine of life, I hope that I'd have learnt something about myself: the admittance of my need and dependence on a living God, an area I can improve on, a friendship with fraying threads in need of repair, or the simple knowledge about something I was unable to see before. I want to come back a better person.

Of course, there are the little snippets that make Camp fun. The games, talent time, the free time for us to laze on the bed and laugh about something that happened that day, the conversations where we learn a little bit about others.

It's these things that make Camp memorable, that make it 4 days and 3 nights of meeting God, others, and ourselves. I hope you'll expect something great from this year's Youth Camp, and that you'll attempt something great upon your return.


Michelle