During 6 summer days, since June 19 through 24, we had the beautiful opportunity to hold a camp for children and teenagers by the topic “Jesus is the Superhero.”
The place of the camp was the campsite in the village of Zalesye. This time, we had the opportunity to receive more children in the camp, than we expected in the first place, so thus the camp consisted of 60 campers – children at the age of 9 to 14 years old. One of the primary goals was to display Jesus Christ as a real Hero as opposed to those “superheroes” out of comics, who are fictional, but nevertheless so strongly capture the minds of the millennials. In addition, we wanted to get the children excited with Jesus by illustrating the truths that they already know with clear and understandable images for them.
All the children were divided into 4 groups, each of which had up to 15 people, a mentor and assistant mentor. Each group fought for the primacy of the camp where points were counted for cleaning and cleanness, help, punctuality, camp games and so on. The main prize in our camp was tickets to a movie trip for all the members of the winning team.
In the camp, we had many wonderful moments with the children, but especially I would like to highlight the last evening. After the evening snack we had a trek to the symbolic cross, to which everyone could bring a lighted candle. It was a special time. The gospel resounded over and over, there were prayers and singing, a time for reflection and solutions. Some children shared with their mentors that this evening was the moment of their repentance.
Despite all the difficulties, the camp has passed blessedly, God showed his mercy and grace, and we all had the chance to be witnesses of how Christ changes the lives of children, turning them into the children of God.
Pavel Rudenko
