Winter Camp!

The church I'm interning at recently held it's annual high school winter camp. We partnered with 4 other churches and traveled to Jonah Camp in Trout Lake, WA (about 80 miles away). It was a great retreat. Our speaker did an awesome job communicating to high schoolers. His talks focused on making Jesus the center of our lives (comparing it to the solar system - how all the planets orbit the sun, we should be orbitting THE Son). We were able to have some fun, we went caving, road on tubes behind snow mobiles and blew up snow sculptures with dry ice bombs!


The final night of camp, we did an experiential worship night. Students were free to roam around to different stations, ranging from a confession area, an identity room, prayer room, a worship room and a just wanna talk room - which is where I helped out. I hung out, just waiting for students to come and talk. This was an emotionally heavy 2 hours for me. I heard students pour out their hearts over things like... worrying about their family's finances, physical abuse, cutting, drug use, not being liked by their mom's boyfriend, feeling alone because friends moved away... the list goes on. After 2 hours of this stuff, my heart was just broken and so heavy. I had to leave shortly after that because I had class the next day (camp continued until the next day). As I drove home in the dark, through the Columbia River Gorge, I was just overwhelmed by the brokenness in high schoolers today. As I heard their stories I felt anger towards their parents, I felt inadequate in words, I felt so sorry. I began praying. I took those burdens to the Lord. I know that He's the only One capable of soothing those wounds and bringing healing. I pray that those students would take their burdens to Jesus as well. For me, this weekend reaffirmed my heart's call to work with youth.