MAD Camp 2009

14 June 2009

I have been to many youth camps - well not that many, really - my first being MAD Camp in 2004 when we were in Shalom Villa; the time when we could fit all of the campers into two apartments and did our praise and worship with only a guitar; when we would literally sit at the feet of the speaker and hear the message.

Time passed and gradually I grew to predict how camps usually are: the first night everyone will be chatting until late at night and doing anything but sleeping; on the second day half the campers will be late for the morning exercise session and for some mysterious reason everyone will only be all excited and ready to take the world on the final night... People will try to stay up as they did on the first night but fall asleep out of exhaustion anyway; and on the last day everyone will wake up late, eat breakfast and go to the final session (which starts late) half asleep. Everyone goes home, sleeps the afternoon away, and continues life as usual.

But MAD Camp 2009 was nothing like that.

I missed the first 24 hours or so of camp because I had to attend class on Thursday morning; but as I reached that evening and attended the first session, it was as though the place was alive and electrified by the presence of God. Pastor Cheah nailed the whole heart of MAD as he began his message saying, "YOU are the face of the future!" God was so powerful and tangible in the place that as the altar call went on late into the night, all I could do was say over and over again, "God... you are here" It was a revelation on a whole new level: the power that created the universe was THERE in the room that we were in.

I left the hall that night saying to myself, "If I had paid the full camp fees just for that session... It was already more than worth it" But as we all know, the camp did not end there. In fact, it only got better, and better, and better, and better, leading right up to the final session on the last day of camp. Sure, we were tired; sure, we felt like we needed more sleep... But God was in the house, and we did not let him pass us by. Every message was alive with the power to break mindsets and transform lives; the anointing as so strong in the place that we know it was more than a feeling... It was God and it was real.

MAD Camp this year was more than "just another camp"... it was more than another youth camp... In fact I do not even know what word I can use to describe it; but one thing I can say... Our time has come.


"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle; C.S. Lewis

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