The past week or two has been incredibly busy, but also incredibly rewarding for us here at camp. After our week of prayer ended, we went straight into our Church ministry class with Prof. David Ernst. The students really enjoyed being able to learn about our roles as Christians in the church and even debate about current Church issues. With all the discussion that happened, I am absolutely sure that we will see some good things come out of what was learned. I'm really excited to see how the students will practically apply these things in their churches at home.
We are now right in the middle of the busiest academic time of the year, and it has been so encouraging to see the students thrive in the middle of academic pressure. We are not only seeing papers drastically improve, we are also seeing students seek to be a blessing to each other and help each other through this time. Next week, the students will be taking their Gospels class with Dr. Wes Olmstead. We are sure this will be an incredibly enriching time learning and critically thinking about Jesus Christ and what role He plays in our lives.
We also had the pleasure of being able to help with the Senior High retreat two weekends ago. Many of the students, in some capacity, were able to spend some good time ministering to a number of 15-18 year olds. It was amazing to see the students building relationships and practically serving this age group. We were thrilled to see the students jump in and enjoy their time with these Senior High campers. Maybe some of them may come back and do the Kaléo program themselves some day?
Finally, we had another adventure this week! We were able to head up North and head over to Horne Lake Caves Provincial Park to go caving! (spelunking?) We all headed up and split into two groups. While one group went caving, the other got to spend some time in Parksville and Coombs Market. Coombs Market was a lot of fun, many of the students spent some time getting homework done, while others shopped in the impressively International Market for treats and Christmas gifts.
Up at the caves we spent a lot of time crawling deep into the earth, up the waterfall, and past the roof spiders. Many of the students had the excitement of squeezing through some tight spaces and spending some time in the most intense darkness they'd ever experienced. For those who haven't experienced it, there is absolutely no light deep into a cave. You could hold your hand less than an inch from your face and not be able to see anything. It was an incredible experience and one that was more than little creepy. But through this, we were able to learn a good Scriptural lesson. We were able to see what the Scriptures were talking about when it talked about darkness. We learned how truly dark darkness could be. How perfect an object lesson before the gospels class! This is what Christ came into, and this is what He has saved us from! (Not caving, the darkness)
This was our last adventure of 2012, the time has flown and we are so grateful to God for the safety He has provided us with thus far. Can you believe our next adventure will be in 2013? And that it's only a few weeks away?
Time flies when you love what you're doing!
Until next time,
Derek
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