Stephen & Megan Carey: One Life Camp

The camp theme was “One Life - How will you live it?”

This is a simple promotional video that Stephen made for the students within One Life.

And here is the poster that I designed to be hung up around the school.

The camp was March 12 – 14th. We had a small group of 8 students for the weekend. Although we had planned for a much larger group, the Lord really blessed our time together. It was a lot more of a relaxed setting for all of us.

Stephen and I arrived at the camp Friday afternoon where we awaited the arrival of the students. The first thing on the agenda when they turned up was to get them registered. This entailed making sure they had paid for the camp, showing them where they were to sleep, and giving each of them a packet with goodies, a journal, pen and the materials we’d be working through for the weekend.

Cedric went through the life of Samson for our meetings together. The main focus was directed at learning from Samson’s mistakes. Cedric spent Friday night walking everyone through the background information to Samson and the cultural context to his life. Saturday morning we looked at how Samson was born into a very privileged situation and how his birth was special because the Holy Spirit was with him. But then Cedric shared on the fact that Samson did not take his life very seriously and in so doing he did not take God seriously either. This was evident through the way he lived amongst the Philistines and how he did not pay head to his Nasirite vows. We concluded on Sunday morning by delving deeper into Samson’s issues. We looked at how God still used Samson’s life to fulfill His purposes and plan, but at the expense of Samson’s own death. The choice for all of us is that we can choose to squander our lives and pursue our own agenda and in the end pay for it, like Samson, or we can choose to invest in our lives by diligently seeking the Lord’s calling for us through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. In the end, the age old truth will ring quite clearly, “We will reap what we sow”. Cedric’s insights throughout the whole weekend were exceptional and we pray that the Holy Spirit used this time to speak to each of the students present.

In addition to the main meeting times, Stephen prepared and developed material for the devotional times that were scheduled for each morning. The goal for this time was self-introspection. We asked that everyone find a quiet place to spend time with the Lord and assess what it means to have a “Quiet Time” with Him and to analyze how they spend their time on a daily and weekly basis. One of the questions asked was if someone, say a friend, were to look at their life and observe their activities and schedule, would it be apparent to that person that this individual has a high regard for Christ and His Word that it would be plain to the world that He is #1 in their life. Along with reading the Scriptures regularly, we also showed them another vital aspect of a quiet time: prayer. We taught them the anachronism: “ACTS”, which stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication as a model to help facilitate a time of prayer.

Here is a quick guide to what the weekend looked like:

Friday
- Registered around 4pm
- Got settled into our tents
- Dinner (which the food for the weekend was delicious…everything was made from scratch including the bread and desserts)
- Our evening meeting: Part One on Samson’s life was on his background with which he came from and the spiritual climate of the culture he lived among
- Based on the fact that Christ has given us all a calling and gifts to assist us in bringing glory to His name, just as he did with Samson, we did a Spiritual Gifts assessment combined with a personality test with our students. The result is an encompassing view of their abilities to give them an idea how God has made them and gifted them in order that they might use their lives in the church and to the glory of the Lord. For each person a laminated sheet with their results was put together and given to them, so that they would have something tangible to walk away with. I think this affirmed to them the areas they had an idea they were gifted in or at least got them thinking of other areas they could be of service. Hopefully this will be a good stepping stone for them to step into their God-given roles within Christ’s body.
- We also shared this video clip with them from John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life”. It’s called a sermon jam and prepare to be convicted:
- For free time we all decided to play “Kick the Can”. This was new for some of them. It’s a mixture between “Hide and Go Seek” and “Tag”. Tons of fun! Then we watched The Great Debaters. If you haven’t seen this movie I would definitely recommend it!

Saturday
- Breakfast
- Personal Devotionals
- Morning Meeting: Part 2 on Samson’s life
- Lunch
- Free time: which everyone played paintball with sling shots…this proved to be quite the challenge
- Our evening meeting: for this evening we had a guest speaker, John, who is a local pastor. He really blessed us with a message on the importance of having the word within you; aka memorized. If we had bible verses memorized like we know our multiplication tables then our lives would be more exemplary of living water flowing out of us.

Sunday
- Breakfast
- Personal Devotionals
- Morning Meeting: Part 3 on Samson’s life
- Then wrapped up to leave

This is Friday evening playing bat mitten. I’m telling you, playing this really gives you a work out! Sadly, due to the weekend’s activities we were sore for a couple of days. Ha!

Ilse and Natassja

Muedanyi

Bruce

Thandi, Pauline and Chris

Bruce and Muedanyi gathering for our Friday night meeting.

The very popular/competitive game: Settlers of Cataan. They played before and after our evening meeting. This group is die-hard.

Saturday evening worship. This is Brian. He’s a friend of ours who volunteered his time and gifting to bless us with worship for the weekend. It was a real treat to have him on board.