Hey everybody, its been a busy couple of weeks hasn't it? I was at camp for a week, and then I went camping for a few days, and now I'm finally home. I know that some of you may be wondering how my time at Hidden Acres was, so I decided to do a post about it. The theme this year was ALL OUT. I'm writing just about all the notes I took the whole week, so I won't forget them, and so you can see what I learned. You don't have to read them all, they are really long ;P. This is my longest post ever.
So I got to camp like a almost a week late because we were still finishing up our softball season. Gloria and I got to camp Friday morning and met the people in our cabin for the first time. They all were really nice and were fun to hang out with.
Saturday we cleaned for a little bit, and then basically hung out the rest of the day, since we T3ers were the only ones at camp. The rest of the campers left Friday. We also got to sleep in till 10:30 that morning :D. Sunday we cleaned, and the new campers arrived.
There was something cool that Hidden Acres did this year. They has seminars for the campers to go to during the day. There were different seminars everyday that you could go to. It was cool. I had the opportunity to listen to many people talk and learned a lot of things. The first seminar I went to was called "Witnessing and Apologetics" by Pastor Chuck (our Chapel speaker for the week).
Here are some notes I took on his Seminar:
*Apologetics-arguments used for the faith
Some good books on apologetics:
*The Reasons for God-Timothy Keller*The Case for Christ-Lee Strobel*Handbook on ApologeticsWitnessing:
*The first part of Evangelism is prayer. Pray for the person you want to witness to. If you don't pray for them before you witness to them, it probably won't work out very well.
Also pray for opportunities to witness to them.
Some verses to share with them are:
*Romans 3:23
*Romans 6:23
*Romans 5:8
*Romans 10:9-10
These are the things I got out of the sermon Monday night:
*Marvel at God's creation
*God is an ALL OUT lover
*God loved us FIRST
I think that it is so cool that God loved us first! This God who is all powerful and perfect, chose to love us; tiny, sinful, unworthy human beings FIRST! He doesn't even need us at all, but he chose us. I think that is incredibly awesome.
On Monday night after Chapel, we played Mission Impossible. It was really fun.
TUESDAY:
Tuesday I went to a seminar by Justin McKenzie called "Eternal Security". He was full of knowledge, and talked so fast it was hard to process what he was saying at times.
These are my notes:
*He became sin, who knew no sin, that we might become, His righteousness.
*If God is for us, who can be against us?
*Will distress cause you to lose your salvation? NO
*Romans 38-39 "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, not things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
*Romans 6- It is impossible to be born again and live in sin
*There will be seasons when our heart is harder than others, but we will not live in sin. If you are a true Christ follower you won't live in sin.
*Eternal life begins as soon as your heart and soul are regenerated by Christ. Since it is eternal, we can't lose it because then it would be temporal, and that would make Christ a liar.
*The difference between a true Christian and an apostate Christian is the heart.
*The phrase "accepting Jesus into your heart" is not in the Bible
As you can see, this seminar had some good stuff in it :D
Wednesday:
I went to a sports seminar by Dustin Brooks. He works with sports in his church at Ames and even has some Christian leagues that he is starting.
I didn't really take notes on this seminar, because he basically shared his own experiences. I did learn though that there are many opportunities to build relationships using sports. I was encouraged to be more of a role model and to show good sportsmanship.
Chapel Wednesday night:
*Be Holy, as your heavenly Father is Holy
*God calls us to be holy people, to be set apart from the world and to be completely different from it
Also on Wednesday, we played Conquest. It was really fun, soooooooo hot :(. Someone told me that it was 105 degrees outside! Our team lost Conquest, but it still was really fun.
Thursday:
Thursday I went a seminar by Katie Northey called "World Religions".
Here are my notes:
*
Theism- belief in a god
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Atheism- there is no god
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Agnosticism- is there a god?
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Polytheism- more than one god
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Pantheism- everything= god
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Monotheism- one god
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Spirit ism- worship spirits; believe that god is in everything; worship ancestors; use charms and fetishes to warn off things.
Taboo- things you shouldn't say or do.
*
Christianity- World's largest religion; decreasing.
*
Islam- second largest religion; growing.
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Judaism- believes in Old Testament and Torah; don't believe in original sin; don't believe in trinity; don't believe Jesus was the messiah. They rejected the messiah because they expected him to be a grand king, not a humble carpenter.
*
Main types of Jews:
Orthodox- traditional
Conservative- modern Jews
Reformed- liberal; subjective
*
Buddhism- starts with Buddha. He was a prince. He left his castle and observed 5 omens.
They are old age, Asceticism, sickness, and death. He then left his family to search for truth. He became "enlightened". Believed in
Nirvana- ceasing to exist. He believed in 4 major truths.
*Truth of Suffering
*Cause of Suffering
*The Cessation of Suffering
*The Path to Cessation of Suffering
He also believed
Maya-the cause of our suffering.
Buddhists also have something called the
8 Fold Path-
1.Right Understanding 5. Right Livelihood
2.Right Awareness 6. Right Effort
3.Right Speech 7. Right thought
4.Right Duties 8. Right Concentration
Hinduism- started 600 B.C.; 13% of the World's population; 4th largest religion. Hindus don't believe that they need to read their scriptures. They believe in 330 million gods. They believe in reincarnation.
Two types of Hindus:
Intellectual- believe you are free through darma
Folk- animistic traditions: do everything out of fear
Three Major Gods:
Brahma- creator god
Vishnu- preserver
Shira- destroyer
Brahman- ultimate reality; meditated upon; they believe your soul and the gods are a part of it.
They have 3 ways to acquire salvation:
*way of works
*way of knowledge
*Way of duties/devotion
I learned sooooooo much in this seminar. I really didn't know that much about other religions, but now I think I have a better understanding of what some people believe. It was really interesting to learn about.
Chapel Thursday Night:
*Lots of the time, we take growing up in a Christian home for granted
*No one should out joy the Christian, because we have been forgiven
*Because we have been forgiven, we need to forgive
*Without love, spiritual gifts are worthless
*Love God, love others. They were made in His image too
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*None of us were worthy of anything of God but his wrath
*You can't tell your brother you love him if you don't tell him about Jesus
*God is love
Food for Thought:
Do I love people or do I just love people who benefit me?
Also on Thursday night we participated in the Camp Talent Show. There were lots of great performances. One group sang a love song about a haircut, it was hilarious. Our T3 cabin took 5 songs and remixed them. We used "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid, "We're All in this Together" from High School Musical, "Baby" by Justin Bieber, "Don't Stop Believing" from Glee, and "Tic Toc" by Kesha. We made some solo parts and added actions to the lyrics. It was really fun to perform.
This is the song.
T3 Remix
I wanna clean where no people are,
I wanna clean, want to see it sparkle,
Mopping around on those, what do you call it again? Floors
Up where we dust, up where we sweep,
Up where we shake the rugs in the sun,
Serving the Lord, glad I could be, part of T3
T3 in the House
We're all in this together cus we sweep and we mop and we plunge all the toilets,
We're all in this together, when we're done, sink the dock, hope nobody gets stuck
(This verse is a T3 inside joke)
And I was like Tony, Tony, Tony, Oh
Where did all his boys go?
Nobody ever knows,
don't you ever ask us why, ey
Just a T3 girl, cleaning in a messy world, took a midnight swim can't see anywhere
Don't stop the cleaning, stack the chairs to the ceiling,
It's all for God's glory
We're talking odobone on our toes toes, wearing our dirty clothes clothes, counselors taking our phones phones,
Don't stop, sweep and mop, gonna sink the floating dock,
Today we're gonna clean till we see the toilets gleam,
Tic toc on the clock, but the cleaning don't stop no,
oh woah uh oh, oh woah uh oh,
The cleaning don't stop till we walk out
The End :D
Friday:
On Friday I went to Katie Northey's seminar again. This time it was about Islam.
Notes:
Islam: Muhammad is their prophet. He was born in 750 A.D. in Mecca, Arabia. He was a merchant. He said Gabriel came and spoke to him. He started preaching and was persecuted, so he went back to Mecca. He became powerful spiritually, militarily, and legislatively. He said Gabriel came to him a second time and said that he needs to destroy those that don't believe in the Islam faith. When Muhammad died, there was a big argument over who would take his place. Mecca is their holy city. When they pray they always pray towards Mecca. Allah is their god.
5 Basic Assumptions:
*Absolute Transcendence
*Human Goodness
*Divine Guidance
*Community of Submission-sharia
*Expansion of Islam
Facts:
*They have no guarantee that they will go to heaven, even if they do everything right
*Believe that there is no one like Allah, that he won't reveal himself. No one knows what he will do
*They have a HUGE separation between men and women. Males have dominance
*Believe in predestination
Their Beliefs on Christianity:
*They believe that the Bible has become corrupted
*They believe that Jesus was a prophet, but not God
*They don't believe that Jesus died on the cross
*They believe that Ishmael was going to be sacrificed instead of Isaac
Again, this was very interesting to learn about. It's good for us to know about other religions so we can know how to witness to them.
The main thing that I learned at camp was how to serve. All week we cleaned and helped serve the food at meal times, etc. It humbled me because, usually I don't have to do the work at camp. I just get to have a good time while other people clean up after me. Well, I learned to appreciate the people that clean up after me, since I was one of those people for a week. I think it's sad though that I didn't learn this lesson until I experienced it for myself.
I'll end this extremely long post with a cool passage I read at camp.
2 Peter 1:5-11 "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self control; and to self control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you posses these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
Mallory
