Recall. Restore. Renew.

Church Camp 2011! :D

Theme of camp this year was Living Radically for God: Recall, Restore, Renew. And it was at Harris Resort, Batam. Theme verse is from 1 Peter 1: 15, "But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do..." Theme song was the hymn I Have A Deep Supreme Desire.

Not many youths came this year and half of them were Sec1s, it was quite hard for the youths to relate to the sermon as well, so I guess it was okay. But still, it was indeed refreshing as well as a wonderful time of fellowship. :D Oh yeah Indonesia is an hour behind Singapore, so we were an hour younger there haha.

Team Unity! Yayy! :D Group leader Jasmine, Aiyun, Jonas, Terence, Kayla, Ryan, Rei Hrn and myself.

The other teams were Group Victory (led by Serene) and Power (led by Danielle). The youth program, in other words the activities during recreational time and workshops, were mainly organised by Serene, Jasmine and Danielle, Abigail helped. :)

Day1

At the ferry terminal, I talked to some youths and got to know Aiyun better. The ferry ride was quite boring, but it was enjoyable. (: Standing in a corner and enjoying the wind with everyone, especially with Abigail. Then I talked to Danielle and Aiyun. Haha Jonas wanted to be cool and hung on to Danielle's sunglasses. When we reached the terminal, we took the bus to the hotel. Had our camp briefing, icebreakers and went for lunch.

Came back to the main room, then we had worship and sermon. Sermon 1 was about re-examining our life's priorities and how putting God first Discussion was good, but... well. Kinda hard to get the Sec1s to focus and listen. Went down for Q&A, collected our key cards and checked in. (: I roomed with Jonas, as we always do. After dinner we had "Don't Forget the Christian Lyrics!" Kane and Daniel Goh were the hosts of the evening. I was the first to represent our group but I had no idea what the answer to the question was. Haha tried to get someone else to go up the next round but the Sec1s bullied me into staying in the chair. Kane laughed at me. Lols haha.

Then the youths went to Smiley, one of the kids' rooms, and played games as icebreakers! Played Monopoly deal, Pictionary (cards version), Boggle Slam and.... something else. We ended slightly early, because the next 2 days were packed. Had to make sure the Sec1s got the message to go and SLEEP instead of staying up and playing.

Day2

Forgot to set my phone to Batam time so Jonas and I woke up an hour earlier. So we studied for half an hour, then we went to disturb Ben and Jonathan in their room. Haha Ben looked so ruffled, it was quite funny. Then we went to knock on Danielle and Aiyun's room. Danielle answered the door with one hand and the kettle in the other. Then Jonas and I went down to Smiley room and studied while waiting for morning devotion to start. Morning devotion was about how we should seek to imitate God. Shalln't touch more on it, got my booklet to refer to. (: Then we had breakfast.

Worship was led by Serene, gave her a message. :) Sermon was about who we are as A PEOPLE. That we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. Personally, it was a reminder that our main purpose in life is to worship God, a lesson that Pearlyn taught me. Discussion was just as good, really thank Him that Jasmine is my group leader. (: And I guess it's a good chance to learn to build up a reserve of patience. (: Shalln't say more. Love does not bear grudges. Haha. But I shall try.

Had lunch, then sermon. Sermon 3 was about how we should strive to fulfill God's calling instead of living a life in futility. Discussion was kinda hard because it wasn't very applicable to the younger Sec1s so... we kinda cut it short. Then we youths made use of the tea break to change into swimwear, finished blowing up the way down. First we played Captain's Ball with water bombs, then we played with giant Lego bricks. We had to swim out in relay fashion and find a Lego brick of our color. Terence, Jonas and Aiyun didn't play and Jasmine was in charge so Joshua joined us to make up for our numbers. Had to try and get them to follow the rules. Then we had a rematch, with one player from each team on a float pointing out where the blocks are. After that we just randomly played with the plastic balls. Haha at the start we just had a friendly competition where everyone tried to collect as many balls as possible. Hahaha Abigail used her shirt, Belle used her top and Serene just used her arms and looked so cute! Haha like YanDi! (: Tried to teach Abby how to swim breast-stroke but I couldn't, so she stuck to her freestyle. Abby, teach me freestyle! Some left, some stayed behind to play Captain's Water Polo.

We went for dinner and as usual, my sister would come and find me and the other youths at the table would play with her and watch out for her. Thanks, my friends! (: Oh I can't remember when, but she called Jonathan as Michael Jackson and she said Kane was handsome. Haha ego boost! (: Haha Jasmine and I always talk about exchanging sisters or her borrowing my sister for a day.

After dinner was workshop, we youth had our own in our Friendly room. We had youth worship, which was led by Adeline with Amos on the guitar. It was wonderful. We jumped, we sang. Workshop was led by Amos and was about prayer and studying the Bible! (: It was really good, and one that was greatly needed. We all pass through the phase of learning how to and gaining confidence in praying, in fact I still am. Okay so first we did this activity called Coloured Room. We randomly split into 4 groups, ours had Joshua as our leader, Ben K, Aiyun, Belle and myself. We went to Jasmine's station first. Our task was to each choose an article from the Home section and an article from the World section and write a brief note on a post-it about it. Then we had to go around and share, noting down everyone's in turn. But we ran out of time so only Ben and Aiyun shared. Oh Ben did an article about a white Kiwi bird, not albino! Amazing, life and death.

Yes so we moved on to Danielle's station, where we read Psalms 98 (i think), then we wrote on a post-it our thanksgiving. Ben and Aiyun paired up, Joshua, Belle and I tripled and we shared then silently prayed for each other. Then Serene's station! Okay so we had 4 post-its stuck together vertically. Serene did it too. First we wrote our name, then a quality of God (we had faithful, cornerstone, listener and others), one thing we have learned from the sermons and something we want others to help us pray for. Then we passed it to our left and prayed for the person on the right. So it went Serene-Aiyun-me-Ben-Belle-Joshua, who prayed for Belle. Oh we were all standing on this big square of newspapers, which shows our common ground! And then we pasted our post-its on the newspaper. Then Tim's station! Okay so first on the top half of our post-it we wrote the sins that were part of who we are as a person, sins we wanted to commit to God, then at the bottom we wrote steps we wanted to take to solve it. Then we crushed them and threw them into Kane's hat, along with the rest's. Second part! Amos taught us some techniques on how we can read the Bible! So first pray about it, then ask questions about it and then talk about it. (:

At night, we all went to Tim's room since he was staying alone. The Sec1s gathered at another room. We had Timtams and milo! :D Haha Kane let me have some of his milo, thanks! :D Though my timtam melted with the super hot milo haha. Somehow only guys can do it properly, thus the new phrase: Guys suck! Haha then we all watched Ninja on star movies, I started doing my Chem MCQ and Jonas got stressed out by me so she started studying. Haha and we learned that "Ayo!" means "Let's go!" Kept using it the next day haha. Sleep!

Shall blog more another time, too tired.