TEEN BOOT CAMP CHANGED LIVES

 Two vanloads of teens, age 13 – 18 departed Cape Cod Sunday night, August 2^nd, for the Christian boot camp sponsored by the Jacksonville, NC church, and held at Camp Monroe outside Fayetteville, NC.  While the Cape and Jacksonville contingents were the largest, the 125 teens gathered from churches as far away as Dover NH, Illinois and Miami, FL.  Fall River and Chicopee, MA, as well as the Bronx, NY and Norfolk, VA churches were also represented. 

This year there were four platoons, each with a male and female drill sergeant.  Pastor Gene LaVallee was in charge of the camp, but our own Christine Connors was a first year DI, and Robin Farnsworth acted as camp nurse.

Camp began on Tuesday morning with all the recruits doing calisthenics  in the mud, but from the very first there was a tangible presence of God, according to Mrs. Farnsworth.  The main speaker was Joe Marino, who has been a pastor for 20 years, sent out by Pastor Richard Ruby’s San Antonio congregation.  He had a real ability to speak God’s word straight to the kids’ hearts and in the first evening service almost half of the kids answered the altar call for salvation, even some of those that had been presumed saved.  By the Friday night, even the six kids who had carried major attitudes and great hostility most of the week, had been touched, softened and changed. 

Parents of Cape teens say their kids seem to have come home really changed, which is perhaps a result of the fact that a group of kids from both Jacksonville and the Cape fasted and prayed before the boot camp.  With that kind of investment by the teens themselves, transformation is likely to happen!!

in formation team work

 

DIs confer

 

water never tasted so good

tug o war

our own DI Connors