♥ Passion Camp 2009 ~

There is always a first for everything.
At Passion camp, I experienced my first for something.

This year, I really didn’t know what to expect. I would have thought that I’d be so busy running around that I would even have the time to sit down and listen to the sermons properly and recieve...which was true in a sense. Me and Eunice were running around like mad making sure everyone had mics, making sure the band knew when to come up, making sure the speakers were well taken care of, making sure there weren’t any millipedes on the floor during alter call. So busy, until we both were walking zombies by the second day.

But amongst all this busyness, God still revealed a little something of Himself to me, something so simple and beautiful that I could never have imagined. Well, the theme of camp is titled, “Simply Him.”

♥ Ready for combat

I experienced something so uncomfortably beautiful as sleeping in a van for the first time in my life! Due to the overwhelming numbers we had for camp, there wasn’t exactly enough accommodation for everyone, and some of the leaders resorted to sleeping in their cars, either because of no space, or because the millipedes got to them. I slept in the van, because there simply was no more beds available, and I wasn’t going to sleep on the floor with all the millipedes crawling about! For those who have slepted in a car would know the feeling...

♥ teamwork

Let me just say, it was one of the most uncomfortable “sleeps” I’ve ever had in my life. In fact, I didn’t even sleep at all. All I could do was just close my eyes. The van actually has a three seater in front, but the way the seating is fashioned made it so uncomfortable to sleep. Basically, the driver and passenger seats were lowered and the seating in the middle was a bit raised, so you can imagine that it was very awkward to lie down. It’s almost like sleeping with a pillow under your back the whole night. I couldn’t stretch my entire self out because the van wasn’t wide enough, so I had my legs crumpled the whole night. So why didn’t I just sleep upright and recline the chair? Well, there was actually a grill bar just behind the seating, so I could only recline the chair about 10 degrees. It wasn’t comfortable, and I was just waiting for time to pass faster so I could get up. To make matters worse, there was a sign outside that was constantly creaking in the wind making it even more unbearable to sleep with the noise.

♥ pawleen

At about 4am, I decided to just sit upright and try to fall asleep that way. But by 4am, I was already pretty wide awake. So I decided to talk to God, “God, show me something amazing. Entertain me while I can’t sleep. Show me a shooting star, show me something spectacular in the skies.” And then I waited... and waited and waited. *GASP* Did I just see a shooting star??? I kept thinking about it, was it a shooting star or just my imagination. I think by that time, I was so tired and hallucinating that I concluded that it was just my imagination. Come 5am, 6am dawn began to break and I was able to watch the sunrise, a process of the sun rising, which is something so simple and beautiful that God created.

It reminded me of story that I read about Joyce Meyer where she wrote about her husband Dave, who is actually a whale enthusiast. Throughout their trip, her husband Dave was hoping to see some whales. At the end of their trip, there were no whales to be seen. After all, the whaling season had already passed. He was walking along the beach after the whole trip and sat down. Suddenly out of nowhere, a whale flipped through the waters, and came crashing down again. Dave was ecstatic that he just saw a whale, even when it was after the whale season and they had all migrated north, there was still this one whale. God showed Dave this whale because naturally, big things catch his attention and God knew that Dave had a passion for whales.

Joyce also wanted to see the whale and wanted God to show her something BIG. She walked back and forth up and down the beach waiting for a whale to jump through the waters... but there was nothing. She decided to go around a bend at the beach behind some rocks, and when she got there, she saw lined up along the beach a million star fish on the shoreline all glistening in the sunlight. Although this was something on a much smaller scale, it touched her heart, because God knew that this is something she would appreciate and would be personal to her.

♥ the band