I Am a Keeper

Our youth conference motto was, “I am a keeper.” This, as you can see is also my title. I chose it because everything we did at this camp would revolve around this phrase. We all worked as a team and did all of the activities together. You certainly felt a bond of love for one another, and if you don’t have love for your fellow brother, you are not a “keeper.” Also, to God you are a keeper! You are extremely valuable to Him.

It was the first youth conference I was able go to, along with a few more youth. It was such an enriching experience to all the youth that attended this trip. There is no doubt that it was the will of God to bring the youth of Bloor St. and Mississauga churches together to catch up on old memories, but to also make new ones.

We left early on a Monday morning, maybe around 11 a.m. It was approximately an hour’s drive to Drumbo (where the youth conference took place). When we got there, we had to unpack our things and get familiar with the place. We then had lunch and afterwards went for a swim.

Our first workshop took place that afternoon. These are the titles of the workshops and a summary of what we learned. (The workshops were twice a day):

Our Introduction – Spiritual Growth

1. Love – God’s love for humanity and how we as Christians can share God’s love with others.

2. Fear – The question we were asked was, “Can fear exist in your heart if the love of God is in your heart?” If we have fear, we don’t have the love of God within our hearts.

3. Anger – We learned how we can remain “cool” in angry situations.

4. Managing anger – We all got to say what things made us angry and why. We also said three things we would do to control our anger.

5. Spending time with God – It is important that we get in the habit of spending more time with God and less with friends. If we meditate with God, alone, it is possible for Him to speak to us.

6. You and God – it is important to spend time with God alone without any distraction from anyone or anything.

7. What does the Bible say of same-sex relationships and marriage? “To have a same-sex relationship or marriage is an abominable sin against God, but we as Christians must not treat them badly, but try our best to speak the word of God to them.

8. How you can be saved “We learned how we can overcome stress and how if we have stress we don’t have God. We also learned how to forgive and what danger lies if we don’t.

Thus you have an idea of what we learned. We dedicated spiritual time together to God, but we also got time to be with Him alone.

Apart from this, we would take nature walks through the woods, seeing God’s creation around us. We saw plenty of frogs and were lucky to see a garter snake. We thought we saw a bear, but it was then discovered it was just Br. Magee getting wood for that night’s campfire. And we can’t forget the mosquitoes that got a little too friendly.

Every night, we all would get together around the fire. The beautiful stars were out, millions covered the sky. We would start off by singing songs and later playing fun games.

Worship would take place early in the morning after breakfast and before the campfire. Each day a youth would lead out at worship time. For Sabbath, everyone participated.

Then last but certainly not least, going canoeing. Although it was tiring, hard, and there was the “famous fall” of the “ruffryders,” it was still a lot of fun and there was a lot of laughs. At times, small races would begin, actually the whole way was practically a race. But seriously, canoeing is hard. By the end of it, you would think your muscles were an inch bigger.

So here I come to the end of my report. I really encourage the youth that didn’t come this year to the youth conference to really think about coming next year. It truly is a blessed experience. You will find you grow spiritually, mentally and physically (as in working out). So, please make that effort, and to the youth that came, I know I will certainly see you next year! May God bless you and be with you.
AMEN.

Veronica N. Garcia, Canada