By Luke Fleshman
Youth Camp 2022 was our second year in a row to combine with Maple City Baptist Church, from Monmouth, Ill. The theme this year was BOLD and our speaker was Blade Sbisa from Living Faith Lee’s Summit.
We went to Logan Valley Christian Retreat in Ellington, Mo. God blessed us with 21 campers (12 girls and 9 boys) as well as 9 adults. We took a tube float trip, zip-lined on their ropes course, slid down a 250-foot water slide, played in the gym into the late night hours, enjoyed some delicious food, and did a lot of games/activities all week.
The most important part of the week was to hear from the Lord. Blade brought the word, and many decisions were made. He primarily preached from 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” He reminded us that being bold in our faith was what God called us to be and the fear that comes, is not from the Lord.
He challenged us from 1 John 4:18 that perfect love casteth out fear and that if we can love those around us with Godly love, that love will overcome our fear. We had 3 students from HBF and another 3 students from MCBC accept Christ as their Saviour!
In addition to the salvation decisions that were made, we had several students make decisions to be more bold with their friends and family. One of our students was able to share the gospel with her friend the night we returned from camp and was able to lead her to the Lord! God was great and blessed us with an amazing week.
We are so grateful to everyone involved in camp:
- Parents who trusted us with their children
- Those who stayed behind and prayed for us
- Those who gave over and above to make sure that everyone who wanted to attend could
- The adults from HBF who gave of their time, talent, and treasure to make this week so great for the campers
- Beau Green and the entire MCBC crew who made the week so fun
- Blade Sbisa for the connections he made with all the campers, his leading of praise and worship each service, as well as the teaching and preaching he brought us all week
- John from Midtown and Terry from MCBC who made praise and worship so special by making up the rest of our band
- Anyone else who played a role in this year’s camp
Eternity was changed because of the investment everyone made for this week to go as smooth as it did.