Bocelli

For several days now, I have been wondering what to do with my lack of recent blogging. Even though I knew the answer was start blogging again, I didn't really do that. However, I now have found an insperation, my writer's block has vanished. I am listening to Andrea Bocelli, the perfect music to just sit back and write. What about I do not know yet. I have the option to become highly philosophical orI can what has happened recently in my life.

To be original I will start with the last one. Last saturday I finished my work at Scott Mission Camp (SMC). Seven weeks long I lived on a beautiful property in the Caledon hills. After one week of pre-camp 6 camp sessions followed. After session 1-4 I was certain that even though the challenge was great, I would not return to camp. I was exhausted and sometimes camp just got too much. However, I had to go back for 2 more weeks, first youthweek and than another normal session (session 5).

to large amounts of marijuana. This meant that for the rest of the week there were only 4 campers in my cabin, which was a true blessing from God. During normal weeks we as counsellors prepare devotions and try to get discussion going between everyone in the cabin. However, since we only had 4 campers we gave each camper the oppertunity to share their own testimony and questions. It was really encouraging to see that all these 4 young men (they were all 17 or almost 17) had some form of trust in God. Defining this past that point seemed a greater challenge though. However, God really spoke through us as counsellors and the hunger that these guys had for Christ in their life was fed tThe youth session was absolutely amazing, insteas of about 100 7-14 year old kids there were about 80 14-17 year old kids. The atmosphere was completely different than normal sessions to. Where normally I have to really by on my campers and make them do simple stuff, this week was way more relaxing. Nevertheless, the week started of a bit roughly, the first night 3 of the campers in my cabin got sent home, actually the police took them away, they all had brought stuff on to camp property that was not allowed. This "stuff" ranged from knives and ligher fluido a certain, extend. God let us plant many seeds, seeds that maybe one day will be sowed by the grace of God. My last week at camp was also much better than the weeks before, my cabin was a blessing and God really gave me the strength and patience to enjoy every moment of it.


Here a picture of the Scott Mission Camp grounds (sorry, it is very small!, hopefully you can still see the beauty)

Thus SMC '06 came to an end. On saturday morning, Heather picked me up and we headed to the Joshua House near Cambridge for an absolutely great retreat. 7 people from the church in the box team came together, and we discussed and talked about our heading for the coming year. The amount of work we got done was amazing, and the talks, relaxing, food and worship were all blessings that made the weekend complete. Monday I came home. I am now in Barrie to the end of my summer break. Which is one week from now, on the 30th I go back to start my 2nd year of Redeemer. The way it looks now, it is going to be an action packed year, in which God will hopefully really play the central role on campus and in our lives. When I made a short stop at Redeemer on the weekend to visit Rachel it was made obvious that a lot still needs to happen before school starts (we have no roads at the moment). But, last year we lasted without an entire library for a ful semester, it can't be that bad! Well, for all you Redeemerites I hope to see you soon (very soon). For everybody else, I also hope that I see you soon to.

God bless, Willem

I guess there are no deep philosophical thougths in this post, maybe later.