Wildwood in Reflection

I'm back from the dead... well, from the spiritual dead... I just got home from Wildwood camp at Hume Lake, which is their leadership vehicle that is a small camp in the backwoods of the property. It's geared towards the leadership kids in HS at their churches and so it is a totally different experience than any other camp.

The theme this year was "Engage," and was focused on Missions trips. The way they presented this topic was excellent because it could have easily gone towards the guilt trip connotation quite easily. And, because of the theme, we got to learn about the starvation around the world and not just the physical starvation. The people over there are starving for the love of Christ. Take for example the "Invisible Children," Ugandan kids that flee to Sudan every night in fear of the rebels who abduct children into the army and then proceed to brainwash them by showing them human torture and violence and death in front of their eyes saying that that is what will happen to the child if it attempts to escape. These children can't sleep in their own home, don't have running water most often, are not safe from predators, and barely get enough food to survive. And I complain about how much I hate my car. Yea, well, only 9% of the world population has cars anyway so screw it.

All over this world there are 29,000 children dying every single day. That's more people than who died in the September 11th "devestation," and all the tsunamis... This is happening every single day. And yet the news wants to care about a war in an attempt to further the apathy of the youth today.

But... with all the poverty, hunger, death, and fear, these children are happy. They're happy when missionaries bring food or water. It is often that the gospel comes with the jubilance of the children and their resilience to the strife and pain that they go through every single day. They thank God for every single grain of rice they get.

We haven't even gotten to the night of Persection.

Monday night we were told about how there are still countries where Christianity is illegal and over 150,000 Christians are killed every year. That's more than ever. Take for instance, Jim Eliot. He was a missionary in Ecuador in the 1950's. He decided to reach out to an unreachable tribe. The tribe, Aca, killed him after they touched down. How does God work through that? His wife of two years, Elizabeth Eliot, learned their language and established a church in the tribe just a few years night.

We got to experience persecution. After our talk on Monday night, they sent us out into the woods to get to a certain point where our church meeting would be held. On the way there we were stopped by people, including ex-Marines, who asked us why we believed in God and asked the questions that no Christian ever wants to answer. After getting asked these questions five times by five different sets of persecutors, I made it to the church meeting where we sat and prayed and sang songs. But they found us. They made us lie with our faces in the dirt and try and make us denounce our faith. In the end, they "killed" the pastor. (Don't worry, they were stage guns.)

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I've decided that there's just too much to discuss about and you honestly wouldn't understand the experience I have had this past week. That just gives you a taste of the dirt so far above the core of the week. Amen and Selah.