1 Dec (Day 2)
I caught a cold that morning.. Which was a very bad idea because I was sneezing and freezing throughout the entire wedding ceremony. However, I was still very happy for Gerald and Dawn. Well, both are doctors, very smart and very nice. her theme verse for the wedding came from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8... It's about love, and what true love entails. I especially like the first sentence of verse 8: Love never fails. In this world, we see many failed marriages and relationships, or hear stories about how a person no longer loves his/her partner. But I guess, then, that real love never truly existed between the couple. So I hope my cousin and cousin-in-law will keep holding onto God's Word, and that their relationships with God and with each other will keep growing stronger each day:) In fact, I think verse 13 can truly encourage all couples.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
After the wedding, we had a buffet lunch, and then Cheri and I waited for Joel and Andy to pick us up (after their worship practice in church) and bring us back to camp. On the way, Daryl and Emerald were picked up too, with "special logistics" for Joel's night games to be held that night. When we finally reached the camp site, the rest of the campers were already proceeding to the large field in preparation for the afternoon's sports games. Cheri and I went to change out of our formal attire and joined in:) The 2 games for the afternoon were soccer and captain's ball. Poor Helen... she sprained her ankle during the first soccer match. After that, she was pretty much limited to the sidelines. That afternoon, because half of the group was injured and Gabriel and Chelsea were also not around, our morale was very low, and we didn't do very well. However, towards the end, after a short spuuring session, we worked better as a team and had a lot more fun:) Oh yeah, after that, all 4 teams of campers combined forces and took on the personnels, who were actually generally brilliant players, as evident during the prior matches (they joined in with the teams). However, for both matches, the campers won! Yay!!!!!!! Some of the personnels attributed it to the age difference (rubbish...haha.. they are only in their low 20s) but anyway, we had fun=P
After the sports games came wash-up and dinner time. Most of us didn't bother bathing yet because we knew that there were night games later on. Anyway, after a hearty meal, we went into the session room for worship led by Jonathan. Following worship, Joel took over and introduced the game to us, starting with a video. It actually just featured Daryl, speaking in a strange language, and the subtitles explaining that we've been captured and brought to a place called Planet Bob. Our mission was to go to each station, following specific route, perform tasks and collect a number of loose letters, which we later had to form a message. This message was supposed to be sent back to our friends on earth... or something.
Every group had a different route to go to. Some stations were visited by every group, whereas some were only visited by selected groups. To determine which route to take, Joel showed us 4 keys which could open up 4 padlocks at the back of the room. Each group was to send one person to select and key, and then randomly try to open a lock. If he/she was successful, that would be the route (marked A,B,C or D). Otherwise, the key had to returned, while the next group tried. And then, lo and behold, he brought out a container full of live mealworms and dumped the 4 keys in! Gross... I wasn't actually scared of mealworms when I was young, until... I found out they grew up to become beetles! Sigh... But since I went up to retrieve the key, and since I was the group leader, I had to act brave...haha. I got a key, but didn't get the right lock. After that, my other group members tried to get another key, but somehow, after 10 minutes, and the rest of the groups had already left, we still couldn't find the key inside the container. So Joel just allcated us the last route (route B)
After the entire game, we didn't get the letters to Andy's station because we made a mistake in the morse code. However, we won! Yay! The message was... "You are not in another dimension. This is just a dream. Wake up." Sigh... with so many important letters missing, we had to keep guessing... Fortunately, we completed the stations so much earlier than the other groups, so we could afford the time:) Sudoku rocks! haha... It saved us more than 8 minutes... Oh yeah, thank you Joel for organising the game.
I'm too lazy to write about day 3...haha... but essentially, it comprised of worship, message, food, a workshop on how we should treat one another, preparation for the skit, whacko, and then the final event... Persecution of the church. In this activity, a scenario was painted for us, in which there is no longer religious tolerance in Singapore, and Christians are persecuted all around Singapore. We had to travel in the dark and visit 4 underground churches. On the way, there would be persecuters who would persecute us for our faith. True enough, we really were. Stress positions, push-ups, sit-ups, dripping of wax, being forced into a ditch and crawling under wooden planks, being blindfolded and shouted at... these words cannot describe the actual experience that we went through. Poor Stephanie had to be rushed to a medical centre to get stitches...and a number of us also got a few injuries. Having carried this activity out from about 1130pm to 130am the next day, everyone was physically exhausted and some of the younger ones very angry because they didn't understand why the organisers had to carry out such an activity. Thankfully, after the debrief, people had recovered a little and things were clarified. This event did make me think more about the price/cost of following Christ, especially since real persecution in the future will be a lot worse (ie. rape, martyrdom, torture like shooting, burning, etc.) Many of us tend to forget these things, and I'm grateful for a reminder through this camp.
Luke 9:23Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
Denying ourselves is one of the hardest things to do, especially with concepts of "survival of the fittest" and "because I'm worth it" or "it's about me" infiltrating almost every society. But I want to renew my covenant to God and place Him first in my life every single day. Persecution, whether a war of words or physical pain, will not take me away from God. I say this in fear, but only the fear of God.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
