More Than A Mountaintop Experience
After every one of our camp experiences we encourage students to take home a challenge booklet. This summer our challenge booklet contained twentyfive daily lessons designed for students to spend time in the Bible much like they did during camp. The goal is to keep them close to the heart of Jesus and help ensure that their time at camp was much more than a mountaintop experience. Each year hundreds of students take the challenge and each year, we are blown away at how their camp experience becomes the catalyst to lasting change. We regularly hear back from students about how God used these booklets in their lives.
One student wrote: “…Last year I used to read my Bible every morning without really paying much attention to what I was reading. I think the challenge has taught me how to comprehend everything I read in the Bible. It was a great way to keep in touch with God every day! I learned that God loves everyone unconditionally (even the people you never would think he would) and that he wants us to share the good news with everyone!”
Another student perfectly captured our hope and prayer for these challenge booklets with these words:
“…I learned not only that God is the one I can turn to for anything, but that I am representative of Him here on Earth and I should be living out a life not solely glorifying Him, but also one in alignment with the plan He has for me. Thank you so much for putting together such a great book for me to take home and make my faith reconstruction last longer than the week I was at camp. The Challenge has given me the courage to start going back to church and join the youth group there as well.”
Often, students will ask us to send them more challenge books for friends and family:
“I learned that someday God will show us everything we don’t know and thought we knew, but will put the things we thought we knew into a brand new light to show us how great He is and how small and foolish we are. My love for Jesus (and how good these devotions were) motivated me to finish them. I was wondering if I could get two more. One for me and one for my best friend. Thank you so much! I feel I’m closer to God because of it.”
The impact of these challenge books has exceeded what we could have ever imagined. Our partnering churches regularly request more challenge books. One church even throws a party after their students complete the challenge booklets to celebrate what God has done, and is doing, in their lives. What an amazing blessing it is to be a part of God’s Kingdom work in the lives of students! Soli Deo Gloria!
