As you may know I have recently got back from two weeks of Youth Camps at Dalesdown, in partnership with Children Worldwide. Both weeks were amazing and God was awesome, as always, at both so I thought I’d bless you with just a very small amount of testimony of what God has been doing in the lives of young people:

 Teens + (28 x 16-18 year olds)

What an amazing week. God was so amazing. I was leading this week with Nigel Thomas and a group of 9 other amazing leaders; it truly was a great team. This year saw a growth over previous years of teens + and a few new faces that have come up from the younger camps.

 Before the camp the team were given the word ‘imagination.’ The bible says that God can do more than we could ask or imagine. We were challenged to think that we should not imagine what God was going to do based on previous experience but that we should imagine bigger, so our prayer was for God to increase our imaginations. We also challenged the young people with this on the first night.

The first meeting on the Saturday night was amazing. The kind of break through in ministry, worship and the teens blessing each other that we’d normally expect on the third or fourth night happened on the first. Leaders literally had to stand back and watch the young people pray for and bless each other. This was especially encouraging as it included the younger teens who were new to Teens +.

The meetings continued to be a blessing through the week and it was clear that these young people all just wanted to get deeper with God and get closer to Him throughout the week. The seminars followed the theme of the week; ‘Mission and Evangelism’, and were all leading up to the main focus of the week.

 The Thursday was planned as a day of mission and evangelism in the town of Littlehampton. Naturally at the beginning of the week many of the young were daunted by this prospect but as the seminars developed through the week many of them seemed excited on the day. In Littlehampton we were going to split into 3 groups. One group to go and meet with the elderly in an elderly people’s home, one group to do Random Acts of Kindness on the streets and another to look for specific opportunities to tell people about God. This third group met in the morning to listen to God about specific people that they would be meeting on the streets. They had a number of words and pictures of people, places and situations, nearly all of whom or which were found in the afternoon. Others helped out in shops, did some busking, gave out flowers and prayed for people. We saw a homeless man lifted from depression and receive joy from God, people opening up to prayer and all of the young people were encouraged by what God did.

 This day was always going to be a step of faith and we knew God would be good and work through the young people, but we never could have ‘imagined’ it being as awesome as it was. After the evangelism we had a meal and went swimming then got back to Dalesdown around 10pm. As it was the last night we decided to have a couple of songs of worship and some feedback from the day and then we’d let them stay up and watch a film…The film never happened as we didn’t leave the meeting place until 12:15am.

I can’t really sum it up in words (hopefully there will soon be some testimonies of the Thursday posted onto this page that will do a better job than I can). But I have never been more proud of a group of young people and so blessed by what God can do through them. It gives me great hope that God is going to Turn The Tide through this generation!

 Teens (47 x 13-15 Year olds)

Arriving back at camp after 24 hours off was hard as the dynamic was very different and there was a new team but Nigel and I as the main speakers and worship co-ordinators of the week were looking forward to what God was going to do this week.

The meetings took a couple of nights to pick up momentum but there will still a number of blessings along the way.

6 of the Teens + stayed on as leaders and were amazing. Again God was using them mightily to bless the young people. It was hard for them having come from a spiritual high to almost back to square one but all of them were strong in faith and made it a focus of theirs to push on in prayer and worship to see God do what He wanted to do in the lives of the Teens.

 We also invited the other Teens + campers to come up on one of the evenings to get stuck in with some prayer ministry – again God used them greatly. We had a picture that day of a waterfall into a pool of water that had 5 possible positions of faith on it; Standing and watching, paddling, wading, swimming or diving. We encouraged the young people to think about where they were with God and then to move to the picture of where they wanted to be. By the grace of God we were able to screw up the first 2 stations as everyone wanted to get deeper and to at least wade with God.

By the end of the week nearly all of the young people had made a commitment to get closer to Jesus and to try and stick by Him throughout this year.

There were also some incredible ministry times where God did amazing and powerful things in the lives of a few individuals which were also a blessing to the team to witness and be involved in, and once again the Teens +ers shone through.

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Overall they were 2 amazing weeks. Please do pray for the young people and stand with them in prayer, especially as they head back to ‘normality’ where for some it is hard to keep the faith. Pray that they receive strength and encouragement from God.

Thank you for your prayers during the weeks they were answered in a way far beyond our imaginations would have ever comprehended.  

-Carl Smith-