Salt Spring Island Debrief

19Jul, 2018

From June 30th to July 7th, our youth group participated in our 21st annual trip to Salt Spring Island. We go over every year to help out residents with odd jobs and yard work around their homes. It is always an encouraging time as we see students and leaders work self-sacrificially and see God do some incredible work amongst the group.

One of my passions in youth ministry is to see youth diving into God's word for themselves. Throughout the week, I challenged our youth to be in the bible daily. You never know how many people will take on a challenge like this, but over the week I saw so many youth and leaders taking time away from the group to sit and read the bible. During our evening teaching sessions, I saw youth with open bibles engaging with God's word and discussing it with each other. I can't express how joyful it made me to see students in grades 8 to 12 have a hunger and desire to read God's word during this week.

One of the challenges of any camp or trip like this is that students get fired up to read God's word and cultivate their relationship with God, and then they go home and go back to old habits. The week becomes a thing of the past and a spiritual high. On the final night of our trip, we had our final worship and sharing session. As a parting challenge for the group, I encouraged them to take what they had learned and experienced throughout the week and use it to continue to pursue God as they went home. It's been about two weeks since we arrived back from Salt Spring and I have already seen and heard of students taking this challenge to heart. One example is a group of girls from our youth group who have decided to start a bible study with each other and keep each other accountable to be in the bible daily, by using reading plans. Some of the youth leaders and I met at Starbucks this past Monday for a weekly summer bible study we are doing with the youth and these girls were sharing, with great excitement, the different devotionals they had already read through.

God is at work in the lives of the youth in South Delta. Pray for our youth, that this passion for God's word will continue and spur them on to make Christ known in their schools, workplaces, and sports teams.

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