18 June 2014
Teens become refugees for a day
Posted in Camp life
Your support kick-starts a new camp, challenging kids to put their faith into action
A new camp, called The Quest, is challenging a group of young teens to live out their faith, make a difference, and be grateful for what they have in Australia.
SU QLD Children’s Ministry Specialist, Terry Williams, and his team wanted to create challenging activities and experiences to help children go deeper in their faith. For children who have grown up in church it is their opportunity to explore in a different way how to put faith into action to help those who are less fortunate.
“This camp is for children aged 11-13 years. This is a great time of life to help children discover the value of their faith by seeing it in action,” says Terry.
“In one simulation on the first day, we locked the children out of their rooms and told them they were refugees, and militants were about to descend on our campsite.”
Tamborine Mountain was divided into different ‘countries’ and each group had a map with borders and country check-points. Volunteers acted as border guards, turning away the groups of ‘refugee’ kids who reached their gates. “Lunch was beans and rice – while the guards got good food in full view of the others. You could see the sense of injustice starting to rise,” Terry says.
The campers wrote their reflections of the day, and there was a debrief session for kids to talk about their feelings.
The campers also Skyped two different groups of kids in South Africa and India, to find out what life is like for them. “That was really powerful and confronted our comfortable Western kids.”
Your support is vital in creating camps like The Quest that help our next generation live out their faith. To support camps like this, call Andrew Beavers on 07 3112 6458 or email andrewb@suqld.org.au
