Worst smell Ever

Dearly Beloved,
 

                                                                                 Worst smell ever

    I don't know if you have ever had the privilege of sharing a cabin with 11 teenage boys at a sports camp. A sports camp where you are running in the heat all day, a sports camp that only gives one team shirt per person for the whole week which means the same shirt is worn every day. Not to mention teenage boys do not always shower and they also think it's funny to close all windows to see how bad it could smell. I had the privilege of being the adult in this cabin. I can truthfully say it was one of the stinkiest cabins I have ever been in. This probably sounds pretty rough to a lot of you. I would do it over and over again because that week at camp God was moving and that's more than worth a smelly room. 

Just about 2 weeks ago Chantiel (my wife) and I headed down to Nanoose Bay Pentecostal camp for a whole week of highs camp where we got to hang out with almost 300 teenagers from across the province. This group of teenagers included a good group of teenagers from here in the Comox Valley that are connected with CPC through our youth ministry or just our community outreach. Half of our Comox group are churchgoers who know Jesus, the other half of our group are community teens who don't attend church or don't know much about Jesus if anything at all. Nanoose bay is an incredible camp that has been running for decades and has always been a Christian sports camp that thrives off of tradition. Students love this place, even the students who hate sports, love sports at Nanoose. The sports part of camp makes it easy to invite friends and get people who do not attend church to sign up, this was the motivating factor for half of our group, they love sports. 

Every night after a long day of sports and fun almost 300 teens gather together for worship, a message, and a response time. It took a couple of days but these students started to love the evenings as much as the sports if not more. There were a couple of boys in particular who did not show much engagement to start the week but every day they would engage a little more until eventually I could see their hands raised worshiping Jesus. I was able to have some cool moments with these boys during the response time and one night specifically I sat with a boy who had no church experience whatsoever, he was emotional and obviously was feeling the presence of God. As I sat with him and listened to him, the conversation led to a moment where I just shared how to accept Jesus into your life, he excitedly really wanted that and he did, he accepted Jesus into his life for the first time at camp. Since this moment we have gotten him and his friends new bibles and they are excited to start this new relationship they have with Jesus. 

Please join me in praying for these students who had real Jesus encounters for the first time. Pray that this blossoms into a long life of loving and serving Jesus. Pray that the words in scripture jump out at them and speak to them. 

Pastor Clay