[Ben Light]: South Africa on December 13th, I actually initially tried to leave on the 12th, missed my flight. That’s one of the first times I’ve ever done that. I got within one minute of the bag restriction, like just a minute past the hour, and they wouldn’t take my bag. So, they rebooked me the next day. So, I left going via Portland to Atlanta and had a huge long layover in Atlanta until the flight to Johannesburg, which left at 6:00 p.m. as you might be able to see from the picture. Delta now is doing weight-optimized flights. So, if people bring in baggage that’s in excess of what they should bring, and there’s a certain amount of weight they have to get enough people off the plane to make it work. You guys, I almost made $4,000. They got up to four grand per person to get off of that flight and take the next flight.

And there was a family next to me that made it to the counter, there were four of them. They almost made $16,000. They were like, “Oh, we got to actually fly on time.” But they were offering $4,000 a night at the Marriott and a steak dinner. I’m like, I almost called Viv, “You’re going on without me. It’s not going to happen.” But I’ve never ever seen offers get that high before. And again, if I didn’t have somewhere to be, I’d have considered it. But ultimately, we left land. I sent my wife this photo just as we were leaving Charleston, South Carolina. This is a little bit later, and I showed her where my plane was and where it was supposed to go, and her response was, “Well, that’s depressing.”

She wasn’t wrong. It’s 14 hours from land to land, essentially, 14 hours over the Atlantic. It’s a 16-and-a-half-hour flight in total. But we left right around Charleston, South Carolina did not see land again until we crossed into the Kalahari Desert in Namibia. And so, as we went over the desert, it was just desolation for miles. Had a moment of a thought, it’d be really bad spot for the plane to go down, but, you know, it just such a long trip, such an absolutely long process.

But I ended up landing in Johannesburg four o’clock South African time after a 10-hour time change. Waited a couple more hours and with some delays ended up making my flight to Cape Town. This picture here of the green, that’s Johannesburg. So, the Kalahari gave way to very irrigated fields, and farms, and just beautiful. Looked like Oregon, honestly, in most of the places that you looked. For the week before camp, I stayed in a town called French Oak, up in just north, kind of east of Cape Town at the home of Vivien and Cathy Botha.

And Vivien and Cathy are the pastor and wife in the Cape Town area. The area in which they live is beautiful. It’s nestled in the foothills of these mountains called the Boland Mountains and is the heart of the South African wine country. And so, if you ever pick up South African wine, chances are very good you’ll see French Oak as the city that it’s produced in. Wine farms everywhere. Blueberries, vineyards, orchards. We had a hint of rain while I was there. It actually felt a little bit like home. Similarities were definitely there.

So, Viv pastors in the Cape Town congregation, which for the sake of sight here is bottom left Cape Town very northern or very southwestern tip of the continent of Africa. But he pastors there in Cape Town, and is the camp director for the South African UYC program. Cape Town is one of six congregations across the country. There’s congregations in Kimberly, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban, and Johannesburg.

And the Cape Town congregation’s approximately 40 to 50 members. When COGWA split, they were down to three. It was Viv, and his wife, and Viv’s mom. And since then, they’ve grown to 40 to 50 members since that process as more and more people have come into the truth. They have a very good mix of younger and older members. Some of the older members, and they had some stories to tell. For those that are not aware of the history of this part of the world, Southern Africa has had quite the history. You know, the Boer Wars took place between the Brits and the Dutch back in the early 1900s. The Bush wars in Zambia took place in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

I met one woman named Letty, they call her Auntie Letty. She’s this older woman, late 80s, early 90s, and she spoke of the death of her husband during the Bush wars in Zimbabwe, what was formerly Rhodesia. Late 60s, early 70s, farm was overrun. Her and her son escaped. They were forced to flee to South Africa and they’ve lived now there ever since. One thing that was very clear as I talked with folks and listened to the stories of those in the area, the past of South Africa in particular, and Southern Africa on the whole, has been one that’s been punctuated by British imperialism and revolt against that rule. And it has not always been without violence.

In fact, for those that are maybe not aware, those of you that are younger, apartheid took place in South Africa up until 1994, and they’re still dealing with the effects of the shift from the apartheid government into the government of today. And so, it’s still a very fluid situation in many ways. And there’s some concerns among those that I spoke with about the possibility of what happened in Zimbabwe happening in South Africa as well. What’s interesting about Cape Town as a congregation, it’s a beautiful example of what God can do. It’s peoples of all nations, all tongues, all backgrounds. I think they were saying 10 different languages spoken in the Cape Town congregation itself. You know, all individuals called from their individual cultures to become a part of God’s family. I spoke that Sabbath on the camp theme, Becoming Sons and Daughters of God, and talked with them very much about this concept overall.

One of the things that was interesting to me, my wife gets on my case all the time about me taking pictures of buildings and mountains. I love mountains, I love buildings. She’s like, “Did you meet anybody or just mountains and buildings?” It’s like, “Well, I did.” But I found this so fascinating. So, this is Dutch Cape Architecture, is what this is called. It’s called Dutch Cape Architecture. Look at that roof. That is a thatched roof. That is a thatched European roof with a palm tree in the background. If that’s not a weird juxtaposition, I don’t know what is. But I was fascinated that this type of thatched roof that you would normally see in England, Germany, France, etc., was so common in South Africa. Very frequent in that area. Once Sabbath was over with, or as Sabbath was concluding I should say, we drove down to an area in Cape Town called Blouberg to take one of the Church family’s home and to watch the sunset down over the Atlantic.

And you can kind of see in that photo, the area was dotted with hundreds of kiteboarders, just everywhere. All over the place. Some of them flying up 40, 60 feet in the area, you know? Flying across crash landing. It was quite the site as we had a chance to watch the sun go down. Now, the rest of the time spent before camp, that was kind of the extent of the sightseeing. The rest of the trip was work. So, we were getting prepared for camp, doing staff training online, and connecting up with our Youth Corps volunteers who were coming in. We had Josh Cook, who is from the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and Wrestley Cinco who is from the Philippines. And I’ve known Josh for a number of years through the camp programs. It was really nice to get to know Wrestley.

We had a very interesting and unique way of doing it. We spent 21-and-a-half hours in a van together. It’s a great way to get to know somebody. The trip was only supposed to be 14 hours, and I tried to give you some perspective here on the picture by taking the size of South Africa and then transposing it over the United States. And I’ve centered Portland on Cape Town. So, it was essentially driving from Portland to about, I don’t know, three or four hours outside of Calgary, is the distance from where we were to camp. So, to give you some perspective, right? That’s the size of the country over what an area we would be familiar with. Now, because it’s Africa and because Murphy’s Law I think works more in Africa than it does in other places, it was kind of a comedy of errors with regards to our shuttle trip.

I won’t get into all the nitty-gritty details, but when Viv first told me we were going to be traveling to camp in a shuttle, I got really nervous, because my experience was shuttles to this point are in Nigeria, which basically means an old Volkswagen van that has been completely gutted with wood planks put across it and then loaded with 20 to 25 of your closest friends. And I thought, we’re going to spend 14 hours in a what? I don’t want to do that. But okay. No, we had a nice one. It was like a little panel van. There was plenty of room. You can look, Josh looks really excited to be there at this point. But again, we had an extra seven hours on the trip because of an accident on the N1, some road conditions and just standard African Murphy’s Law.

So, this picture of Josh was taken about two hours into our trip. This picture of Josh was taken at about 19 hours into our trip. I told him I wouldn’t put it on Facebook. So, it’s not on Facebook, but it’s here. The point is, none of us were having a good time. At that point, none of us in the van were having a good time. It was really pretty rough. It was an adversity-type thing. We did see some cool stuff along the way. Many of the areas on the sides of the road are dotted with African animals. We saw some springbok there at the top left, some eland down at the bottom left, and then the majestic kudo there on the right. So, we saw just huge herds of them out in the fields. Josh and I, even saw, you know, you drive up and down I5 and you see hawks perched on the signs.

There was a monkey at one point just standing and we blew past it. Like “Josh, was that a monkey?” “Yep, that was a monkey.” So, some cool stuff. But ultimately, as we got to camp, we got there again, because it was, you know, super late. We got in about 3:30 in the morning after all of our comedy of errors were taking place after leaving about 5:00 a.m. the morning of. We really couldn’t gauge much about our surroundings. When the daylight came up and we managed to stagger our way out of our accommodations, we were just blown away at the facility that we had for camp. So, this is Moolmanshoek, which is the leadership development center where they decided to have the camp for this year. It’s a beautiful facility. You can see that kind of rock escarpment in the top left photo that goes all along the back of the property.

You can hike up there. They did some rappelling and things off at the top of that. We’ll show some photos of that in a minute. Had a couple of camp dogs, some Boerboels, as they call them. South African breed of dog there in the middle, kind of a pit bull cross. In this case, there’s some Rottweiler in there. And then you can just kind of get a feel for the surroundings itself. The camp itself was at about 6,000 feet, so a little more than a mile up. So, we’re a little bit of high altitude. And then once the hikes and things, Josh and I, were kind of walking around going, “Why is everyone breathing so hard? What’s going on here?”

We figured out we were at 6,000 feet. So, it took a little bit of time to get accustomed to the altitude, get everything set up for camp. You know, essentially with camp, once your preparations are in place, the schedule takes over, you know, this camp was no different. Once Monday hit schedule took over and off, we went. With regards to the camp, we had 27 campers. They were aged 8 to 19. So, it is kind of an almost combination preteen camp and teen camp. The boys’ dorm was skewed in the younger direction with about a dozen under the age of 12 and then a few that were 15 to 17. The girls’ dorm was mostly 15 to 19 with one or two that were younger than 15. So, dance was interesting. The girls were wanting to dance and the guys were wanting to run around and eat food. So, that is no different mind you than camps here in the US. No difference whatsoever.

Kids are kids, doesn’t matter where they’re from. But this camp in particular does a lot of what many of our international camps do, which is they age or they use family-style dorms. Here in the US it’s age-banded. So, we are 14, 15 in a dorm, 16, 17 ages in a dorm. Here it’s 8 to 19 all in one dorm. And so, it’s a little bit more challenging in some ways, but what’s really cool about it is you get to see the kids in a very different light. Many of the kids step into that older brother or older sister role, and they kind of take one of the other kids under their wing for the week, and you see some leadership skills developing. You get to see some of those kids that’ll step into that counselor role in the next few years. During the opening night, opportunity we had to sit down and talk and orient the kids.

In addition to our daily compass checks that we had in addition to the Christian living classes, Mr. Botha focused very heavily on the concept of The Zone. Now, for many of you that have been in our camp program or at least sort of connected to the camp program, The Zone is a concept that’s been around since the mid-’90s. It’s something we haven’t talked about a lot recently. We kind of mention it, we kind of, “Oh, that’s not in The Zone, but we haven’t really explained what that means.” And so, we’ve really taken, I think, a new effort and a renewed effort to do what we can to really focus on this concept in our camp programs going forward in the next few years.

Because South Africa’s camp was new, it’s just their second year doing this, we felt that it was really important to focus on this for the time that we were there, to really lay a foundation that can be built on as we go down the line. Now, what The Zone is, The Zone is an environment essentially. We jokingly say it’s like a bubble, but it’s an environment that we build very intentionally. It’s something that has to be very intentionally maintained, and as a result, it provides an environment in which God can work with a person. In fact, when you think about really what is The Zone, what does it do? How does it work? It’s the way that God works with us. It’s really the way that God deals with us, as we’ve been called. Just the right amount of challenge, just the right amount of success, just the right amount of fun, just the right amount of all these things.

And that gives God a heart that can be worked with. It gives God the ability to work with us in that sense. And so, when they started thinking, how do we structure our camp program, they said, well, “How does God work with us?” And they established this. There’s seven elements to it. You can see those up there. It’s fun, challenge, success, support, inclusiveness, structure, and building positive relationships. And it’s important to consider very similar to the fruit of the Spirit. It is an entire package. You cannot operate without all of these components of this package in place.

If you do, you have not established The Zone. It requires all seven of these things to be active, to be maintained, to be intentionally built, in order to provide an environment in which growth can take place. And when we do this in our camps during the summertime, during the wintertime, when we do this in our camps, we see that growth in those kids. The parents say over and over, “My kid came home a different kid.” Okay, it lasts for a little while. Usually, there’s some inertia that returns back to resting state, but overall, it can’t operate without all of these components of the package in place.

Now, the other aspect of this that’s challenging is that it’s something that an entire group of people can work to build, work to maintain, but yet it can be undone by one person. It can be undone by one person with their attitude, with their, you know, their words, their actions, the thing they choose to do. As that influence spreads, the whole entire thing can be undone. It can be completely taken apart. It’s in this zone that people feel safe to try things that challenge them to step out, to make attempts even though they might fail because they know in this environment, because of the way The Zone is established, that they’re supported.

Our campers know that they’re being included. They know that they have positive relationships to rely on. They know that there’s structure, it’s in this environment in which they feel safe. With the time that we have left today, what I’d like to do, is I’d like to share some of the things from this week of camp as it pertains to these elements of The Zone. And what I’d like to do is ask all of us a very important question. And that question is, are you in The Zone? Are you in The Zone? That’s the title today and the question that I hope we’ll all ask ourselves as we meditate on these things going forward from today, considering these seven elements and how they’re in play in our lives.

So, let’s take a look at these elements a little bit more in depth. First one is fun. Okay, the first one is fun. Let’s go to the book of Psalms to begin today, Psalm 16:11. And what we’ll do is partially explore God’s viewpoint on the concept of fun. Psalm 16. And we’ll go ahead and pick it up in verse 11. And I’ve put most of the passages today up on the screen. So, if you’re not needing to turn there, I guess you wouldn’t have to. You can jot them from there into your notes. But Psalm 16:11, you know, sometimes what happens is people take a look at God and they conclude, well, God’s just a killjoy. He’s just a killjoy. He doesn’t want anybody to have any fun at all. He has so many rules. So many “thou shall not.” Based on all of that, how could you be a Christian and have fun? Is that true? Is that true? Of course not. Of course not. Do we have fun at camp?

Absolutely, we have fun at camp. We have a blast at camp. We have so much fun at camp. There’s no question. The activities that we do, the conversations, the laughter that we all share together, we enjoy the time that we have together. And it’s amazing. We’re able to do so without resorting to all the things that break God’s law that the world thinks is fun. Yet we can have an absolute blast together in seven days and not break any of them. It’s incredible when you consider the enjoyment and where it comes from. Our fun, our enjoyment comes from being together. It comes from going through the activities. Yeah, the activities are fun. But it comes from connecting with others of like mind. It comes from bringing the coals of that fire together and allowing them to then burn.

And that’s what we do during our camp program. We bring those coals together from all over the place, and they come together in a fire. You know what we know? God desires His people to enjoy life. God desires them to experience the pleasures that life has to offer. Life shouldn’t be one of stoicism and a stiff upper lip, no smiling, no laughing. God has a sense of humor. That is one of the attributes that God gave to us when He made us in His likeness. God has a sense of humor, laughter, joy, fun. They’re part of the collective experience. Certainly, these things, this fun that we talk about, it has to take place within the boundaries of God’s law. Those guidelines that God has given us with regards to, should say guardrails, rather, that God has given us in our lives.

Psalm 16:11 David writes, “You will show me the path of life. You will show me the path of life.” God shows us what that life should look like. He says, “In your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

And these pleasures that we look at, these things that God has provided, they’re a life well lived. They’re the joy of God’s presence in our life. The opportunity that He gives us to live with Him in eternity. These things are evident when God’s people gather together. When God’s people join together, whether it’s at camp, whether it’s the Sabbath, whether it’s the feast, whether it’s socials and activities. People of like mind coming together, there is fun, there is enjoyment, there are smiles, there are laughter. And those are things that God desires in our life. Christ wrote in John 10:10 or John wrote rather, Christ inspired it.

John 10:10 He said, “The thief comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy.” But it says, “He comes,” speaking of Christ, “that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly.”

God desires us to have an abundant life. A life that’s full of shared experiences, full of life, love, joy, and fun. It’s okay to have fun. Some of the things that we’re doing here, obviously soccer, “football” was a blast. Africa, it’s a big deal. Very big deal. South Africa, rugby’s a huge deal. They’re big rugby people in South Africa. Arts and crafts, kids had a good time there. We had a hike going on the other side where we could look at all these really cool animals. And in the middle, that’s the Weetabix challenge. Anybody ever had Weetabix? Weetabix comes in a bar form. It’s about this big. It’s basically shredded mini-wheats in a bar form, kind of. And what you do is you put it in a bowl of cereal, usually two of them or in a bowl, you crush it up and you pour milk on top of it. It’s a cereal. So, day one, dumb American thought it was a granola bar. And so, I sat down at breakfast and...

They’re horrendously dry. They’re incredibly dry. And thus the Weetabix challenge was born. And so, what we decided to do at campfire one night is the kids had to eat two dry Weetabix. Alvin Schuler, the staff member, had to eat three because he was enjoying it too much. But they had to eat two Weetabix and then whistle. And Olivia there in the forefront, she was our winner. So, Olivia beat everybody, which was great. We have fun. Fun is part of what God desires of us, part of The Zone. God also desires though that we move out of our comfort zone. And for some even that can be fun sometimes when you move out of your comfort zone. But one of the things that we specifically structure into camp are experiences that are going to push people out of their comfort zone.

They’re experiences that gives them, we’ll say opportunity, to step out of their comfort zone. Sometimes it’s obvious, but other times it’s things for some like that’s not a problem at all. That’s normal. That’s fun. I’m all over it. You know, for some though, getting up in public speaking, somebody getting up in song leading, somebody getting up and giving a prayer, that is like absolutely not, I can’t do that. What God desires of us is to move out of that comfort zone to be able to step out of that comfort zone in growth.

One of the opportunities that was afforded to make people uncomfortable this year was as a result of the large escarpment that was behind the Moolmanshoek property. There’s a ladder there that’s installed, which you can see in the middle photo, that’s taken from the ground, looking up as Rhea... Rhea was my favorite. I wish we had him micd up, like to where we could listen to his talk because he could hear him. People would go behind him and he’d go, “Stop. You’re shaking the ladder. Do not shake the ladder.” And he’d be going, and pretty soon you hear this, “Whoa, whoa.”

It was fantastic. But I took that picture just to give you a perspective of what that climb looks like. They would climb, and it’s really hard. I don’t think you can see it on the left picture. Maybe you can’t. Oh, yeah. You can. The people down at the very bottom. And then there’s people actually partway up mid-way on the, I don’t have a laser pointer, but mid-way up on the ladder. You can kind of see that too as they went up to the top. It was probably 60, maybe 70 feet high, if I had to guess. I don’t think it was 100. But it was probably 60 or 70 feet high. And they have a ladder that’ll allow you to go up. They call it Abseiling in South Africa.

That’s the Afrikaans word for rappelling. But you could then rappel off of the cliff face. For most of the campers, none of them had done anything like this before. I mean, this was a brand new experience for the vast majority. There was quite a bit of trepidation, there was some tears, there were some really serious shouts of concern from the top as they sat back into nothing as you start to rappel off the side. But you know what was incredible was the huge smiles when they hit the ground and they realized they had conquered their fear. In fact, how many kids got down and said, “I want to go again. I want to go again. I want to go again. I want to go again.”

You know, it was just that first little bit of getting over that and being an issue at that point. In the book of Joshua, the Israelites are about to step into a new place. They’re going to cross into the Jordan, into the land which God had promised them. You know, the past 40 years, which had been a lifetime for most of them, you know, and hadn’t necessarily been comfortable in the sense that we might consider comfort, but it was something they were used to. Let’s put it that way. It was normal. That was life. We go around in the wilderness, we pick up camp, we move, we do it again. We just keep going, and going, and going. As they kind of went around in circles, so to speak. And now, it was time for them to transition forward. God told Joshua, just as He was with Moses, God said, “I’ll be with you too.”

Joshua 1:9 He says, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed, for the Lord Your God is with you.”

Right now, imagine. Put yourself in Joshua’s shoes for a minute. You’re now in the charge of the congregation of Israel. God is relying on you to be able to make this happen. And that’s a challenge. That’s tough. But when we realize that we can place our trust in God, and when we realize that it’s through Him that we can face the various challenges we experience in life that are in place to help us learn to place our trust in Him, we step out of that comfort zone. We embrace the challenge that He places before us. One of the other aspects of The Zone is support.

You can’t have challenge without support. You know, in order to face challenges, you need support. And we talk about in the camp program sometimes, you know, when it comes to putting kids out of their comfort zone, we want to walk them right up to the line of where they’re comfortable. We want to take a step past that line and then together we want to take one more step. They need to know that there is support. They need to know that they are covered, that there are people in their corner. We don’t want our campers to feel alone. We don’t want them to feel like they have to do it on their own. We want them to know that there are people there to help them, that there are people who understand what they’re dealing with, so they can take these risks and push themselves through into the challenge in order to experience success.

This support enables them to be able to step out of their comfort zone in ways they might not otherwise and grow accordingly in a place where it’s safe. You know, one of the challenges, we’ve mentioned this before, that many of the youth in Africa face is water. Seems silly to us in some ways. I mean, we’re born in many ways in a pool and swimming, and I mean, that’s something we do. We’re just used to it. But it’s not the case there. Many African youth don’t swim. Many of them have very little to no experience with large bodies of water. And to be honest, are quite afraid of it. I have had kids climb my head in the pool in Nigeria and Ghana and be perched on my shoulder. I mean, just, they don’t want anything to do with it.

Wrestley Cinco from the Philippines, she’s a swim instructor. And so, her goal this week was to get these kids in the water, get them supported, get them comfortable. One kid, his goal for camp was to put his face in the water without having a panic attack. He did it. He absolutely did it. Now, obviously, there were other goals but, you know, that was a big step for him. And he was having a blast. Put a life jacket on him, let him float around, and occasionally he’d go over backwards and freak out a little bit, and right himself but he was enjoying himself. He was able to get in that really cold water and enjoy himself. You take a look at that picture on the left, what happens if that support is not present? They drown. That support’s not there, they drown. We have to have support. We have to be supported in the process. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 gives us our marching orders. It’s right here.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore, comfort each other,” encourage each other, right? That word comfort can also be encourage. Encourage each other. “Edify one another, build up one another. Strengthening, and supporting, and providing for one another.”

As Paul tells Thessalonica, he says, just as you’re doing. He says, “You’re doing it. Keep up the good work.” We have to be supportive of one another. We have to strengthen ourselves in order to be able to experience that success. This middle picture is from the hike that we did the first day that the kids were there. And I want you to see, the reason I’ve included that, is you see that wet spot on the left of the kids, that’s going to come in very, very strategically here in a minute or two.

There’s that little dark spot where the water’s coming out of the hillside, down that sandstone. Remember that water, we are coming back to it. Down here at the bottom on this right side, we got our cheer squad down there in the helmets underneath cheering for everybody as they go up the ladder and they rappel down the side. That cheer squad was pretty critical. All right, success. The goal of challenging ourselves is to then experience success. Nobody sets out to challenge themselves to fail utterly, right? The goal is to set realistic, achievable goals so that a person can experience success, to be able to conquer the challenges to come out the other side successful. and we had opportunities for that while we were at Moolmanshoek as well.

One of the things that is interesting is there were a couple of substantial hikes that we took while we were there. You can see the elevation of the mountain range that’s around Moolmanshoek. Moolmanshoek is that little building down at the bottom right corner of the left picture. And so, that ridge behind them, sorry, I’m not talking into the mic, the ridge behind them is that ridge, which they repelled down. And then we went and hiked around the back of that ridge and went up that draw towards the first pyramid. We didn’t quite go all the way to the pyramid, but we stopped just short of it on that ridge. And then we hiked back down around the ridge and then kind of worked our way down the setup. Well, as you mentioned, you know, the hike, it was up there, you know, it was a significant amount of elevation change. It was a higher, you know, elevation already to start from. So, it was a little challenging in that sense. But what was most challenging for all of us is that the exposed sandstone that we scrambled across had these wet spots.

And it might not think anything of it. Sandstone seems pretty abrasive. Just get a hold of it, no problem. Their plants there exude oil. I’ve never seen anything like it. The water was an oil slick. Literally, like somebody had dumped motor oil. It had the rainbow coloration and everything. Finally asked. I was like, “What is this?” They said, it comes out of the root of the plant. It’s slick. When you’re on a 60-degree slope, you hit that, you are unexpectedly going down. And we were slipping and sliding and falling, and needless to say, partway up the draw, the kids were fed up and wanted to go back. They’d fallen, they’d slipped, they’d hurt themselves.

You know, one person had an injury that they were nursing. And I mean, it just was one of those things. But as you got a little bit further up, you can see the view in that top photo and then the view from the top there in that second photo of the valley. And once the kids could see that, once they saw the success and how high up, they’d gotten, then it was like they had a new like urge and a new energy to be able to go forward. But the hike was a little bit slow going. It was a little bit challenging. But despite the challenge, when they got to the top, when they achieved their goal, they were very excited. They were able to see what they’d done and they could experience that success.

During the time of Asa, king of Judah, Azariah, the prophet came to him. Asa was in the midst of a series of religious reforms in the land of Judah. He was in the process of taking down the idols. He was in the process of trying to reestablish the true worship of God.

2 Chronicles 15:7 Azariah comes to Asa and he says, “But you, Asa.” Specifically to Asa, “Be strong. Do not let your hands be weak for your work, your effort that you are doing shall be rewarded.” He said, “You will have success.”

And Asa in the midst of those spiritual reforms he absolutely did. But it required a tenacity. It required an energy and an effort on behalf of Asa. Of course, God working with him as well. We might say in our vernacular, we might say sticktoitiveness, tenacity. They have a cool word for it. In Afrikaans, it’s fosbiet. And it literally means bite down. It’s like a dog on a toy. Do not let go. It’s that tenacity that you have to have when you’re approaching some of these things in order to experience success, an unwillingness to stop and a desire to persevere.

One of the other aspects of The Zone and part of the success that we have in The Zone is the inclusiveness that we encourage. This word’s been hijacked in recent years. It has a little bit of a different connotation today, but in our program, the goal is we strive to have no one left out. We strive to have no one excluded. We discourage cliques, we break them up as much as we can. We actively try to work to bring those that find themselves on the outside to the inside as much as possible as the week goes on because we want the campers to feel as though they are a part of what’s going on, because they are. They are a part of what’s going on. They’re a part of what we’re building. In Romans 12, the apostle Paul describes kind of a similar concept to what’s described to the Church in Corinth. The description to the Church in Corinth is much more descriptive. It’s much more fleshed out. But Romans 12, the apostle Paul talks about how we’re all part of the same body, that each of us has to have a proper view of our importance in that body. Kind of along the lines of what Mr. Emery was talking about today. You know, recognizing where we are in things and not letting ourselves get too big-headed. But the recognition that without all of us together, we can’t function.

And we talk about an individual calling that God provides each of us. But we also talk about how that individual calling is processed collectively. We’re, yes, called individually, but we’re also called together as a body because there’s certain things that we have to practice together that you cannot practice in isolation. You cannot perform aspects of this faith in isolation, period. It requires other people to act on, to act with. And so, Romans 12:5 talks about this.

Romans 12:5-7 It says, “We being many are one body in Christ, individually members of one another. That there are gifts that each of us have been provided that are required to make this body work.” To make it work appropriately.

Whether it’s ministering, or teaching, or encouraging, or giving, or being merciful, the list goes on. But Paul’s point to them in Rome was essentially that they all had a part to play. The goal then is to build this family. The goal is to build the family of God. And we have opportunities all the time. We had it during the Camp Sabbath services. We had it on the hike, which you can’t see in the back there are a very rare African animal called a sable. They’re very challenging to see. They happen to have a small herd of them on the property, which was cool. But they’re a very, very neat little animal. Structure. Camp doesn’t work right if we don’t do things right, if we just do things randomly. You know, if we decide one day we’re just going to get up and, ah, it’s time for soccer and then ah, we will go do something. I don’t know, what do you think? One of our favorite scriptures is 1 Corinthians 14:40.

1 Corinthians 14:40 “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

God is a God of structure. God made sure that the days worked in a certain way. He made sure the seasons worked in a certain way. God is an ordered God. And as a result, it’s important that we are also ordered, that we also have a structure to our lives as well.

There has to be structure. There has to be schedule. Schedule drives the bus. It can certainly be overdone, you know, if you have it planned minute to minute to minute, it can be very challenging sometimes. But it can also be underdone and then it’s chaotic. And so, finding that right balance in life, that the kids are safe, that it’s all taken care of is important. You know, if you’re thinking about Abseiling and they’re repelling down a rock face, you do not want your instructors just randomly going five minutes before we go, throwing a bunch of ropes in a bag, maybe a helmet or two in a harness or three, and going, “All right. You guys ready? Let’s go.”

It was so comforting to walk up and see they had all the ropes laid out, they had all the harnesses laid out, they had all the helmets laid out, you know they were checked, they were double-checked, they were triple-checked, and it was safe. And you knew that that was the case. When there’s not structure, you don’t know that that’s the case. You can’t have a safe environment to then build these positive relationships. Lastly, the importance of building positive relationships. You know, we talk about building positive relationships. This is the important part. Positive relationships. We’re not encouraging relationships in general. We’re encouraging positive, iron-sharpening-iron type relationships. Folks who go to camp, these relationships go on for years.

Some of them have met spouses at camp, ultimately gotten married further down the road. Have had families, relationships that have been established from that camp program. But we have an incredible opportunity to build relationships in our program. Down at the bottom, the photo there of me and the Youth Corps volunteers, we had a chance to connect with those folks throughout the week, work together. Up top, the girls, that was their trash and show. It was a trash bag fashion show. We have fun. What can we say?

Getting to know Wrestley and Rodrick Epomba. Rodrick Epomba there in the middle, he’s going to be the camp director in Zambia next year taking over for Derrick Pringle. Fun fact about Rodrick, Rodrick speaks 16 languages fluently. That is not a misnomer. It’s not like he knows one word or how to say hello in this. He speaks 16 languages fluently. It’s unreal. I’ve never seen anything like it. The kids, they get a chance to get to know the Youth Corps participants and then we get a chance to get to know the administrative staff. It’s all about building these positive relationships. They help us to grow stronger in the long run. You know, Christ told His disciples ultimately, that it would be the love that they had for one another.

This visible love that they had for one another, words, actions, etc., that the world would recognize them as disciples of His. How can you love if positive relationships are not in place? It’s required. It’s an absolute requirement for this to take place as we look at John 13:34 to 35. So, that brings us to the takeaway lesson and the question I’d like to leave you with today. This is Haute Bay, just on the bottom part of Cape Town. Around the backside as you start to go down the little peninsula, this actually for those of you that are surfers or enjoy surfing, this is called Sentinel, also called Dungeons is where they do massive, big wave competitions every year.

Basically, the whole place shuts down for three days when the waves come in and guys go surf 60, 80-foot waves off that point. That’s also where all the big sharks are that jump out of the water and eat seals when you look at Discovery’s Shark Week. So, you know, swim at your own risk. But the question is, are you in The Zone? In other words, are these seven elements of The Zone, are they present in your life? You know, one of the things we talked about with the kids this year at camp and also our staff, is that this zone, this environment for growth that we look at was never intended to be something that only took place for seven days and then we put it away.

It was never intended to be something that we pull out, we live, and then we put it back in our pocket for the next 360-some days. Can’t do math, excuse me. The idea is that this zone, this environment for growth should be present all the time. In our life, we should be allowing God to work in us this way, because if we’re putting it away after we leave camp, we’re missing an opportunity. We’re missing a huge opportunity for God to work in us. We have to live a life in The Zone outside of camp, whether we’ve been to camp or not. Because the reality is this environment is where God works with us. We should have fun in life. We should find places and times to experience joy. Sometimes that takes work. Sometimes, you know, our life might be too focused on fun and we need to find a proper balance. But the life of a Christian is one that includes fun and includes joy.

Psalm 118:24 “For this is the day the Lord Has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

And we just structure specific activities, connections, and experiences that provide fun and also provide joy to our lives. We also need a life that has challenge in it. We need a life that has challenge. We need a life that has difficulties, things that push us out of our comfort zone. Whether it’s those thrill-seeking activities you saw up there, whether it’s just simply something as simple as public speaking, something that forces us to grow.

We have to know that we have a support network in place. And if we don’t feel like we do, we need to find one part of that, that reaches us. It’s our responsibility to reach out and to find people. Can’t just expect they’re going to find us. We have to reach out. We have to put in that work to be able to have that support network as part of that inclusiveness as well. The onus for building positive relationships cannot fall on the other person only. We need to live a structured life. We have a life that has schedule, that has discipline, that has self-control, one that is punctual, one that has time, which is specifically carved out for God, for our families, and for the pursuits that fill our cup. We also need to make sure that we’re continually working to build and maintain positive relationships in our lives. Again, without our friends, without our family, without God, you know, it’s difficult to be able to understand what God means by the relationships that He’s called us to build.

Sometimes we look at building too, we want to consider the importance of maintaining. It’s easy to build relationships sometime. It’s more challenging at times to maintain them. But rather in all of these components need to be in place in order for The Zone to be established effectively. You can’t have all of them but one and expect The Zone to be present. It’s all or nothing. And so, the question that I want to leave you with is today, are you in The Zone?