This year 60 kids went with 11 mentors from Youth For Christ to Woodleaf alongside four local churches. As I’m sure you know, a lot of effort, energy and money goes into making camp possible. Kids fundraised, adults fundraised, many gave scholarship donations and took off work to spend a week in stinky cabins with teens. In short, camp takes a lot!

Is it all worth it? Every year we ask this question and every year the answer is YES, because of kids like Liz and Rees.

Just a couple weeks before camp Liz was self-harming through cutting. Feeling at the end of her rope she took up a Bible and started reading. And through her involvement with Youth For Christ’s Campus Life program at her school, she accepted an invitation to go to camp. Looking back I can see God pursuing her all along.

At camp Liz felt the peace of God and gave her life to Christ! Since then she reported that she’s feeling so much better and has been going to church with her cabin leader.

In fact, of the 60 kids that went with YFC, 6 accepted Christ and 8 were baptized – praise God! For many teens Camp is a catalytic moment in their spiritual journey. They meet Jesus in new and profound ways, they experience Christian community, and have deeper conversations in undistracted settings. That’s what happened for Rees too.

Rees took a chance on camp – his first one ever. He’s dabbled in church but is fairly new to the things of God. He came to YFC Camp because his Campus Life leader invited him. The first day there he wanted to leave and was feeling on the outside looking in. It took a lot of leaders coming around him to give him the encouragement to give camp another day.

As you can imagine there were a lot of ups and downs, but on the last night Rees went from alone in the back of the room to up front, arms around new friends, singing in worship. After service Rees came up to me and told me that he had had a crazy dream. He met Jesus in his dream. He felt seen, known, and loved. It was pretty wild, as God-stuff usually is.

A lot of prayer and a lot of support went into making camp happen, and for those that had the joy of participating, thank you so much. Each year we’ve increased the number of kids that have gone to camp and it has necessitated more funding. In total $23,000 was raised and spent for camp 2025 to scholarship a portion of the cost for kids.

Is camp worth it? In a time when 4 out of 10 teens are persistently lonely or sad, and when 1 out of 10 are thinking about killing themselves, it is more than worth the investment for kids to connect to life, love, hope and purpose found only in Jesus Christ. 

While camp may be over, the Christ-sharing relational work continues. And we need your help to supercharge the work.

1. Would you consider giving again to fuel YFC through summer? We’re following up with kids, meeting with student leaders before school starts and doing our final trips and events.
2. Would you share Youth For Christ with a friend by sharing one of our recent stories at yfcnow.org/stories?

God connects those who pray, those who give, and those who go, to reach over 1,400 spiritually lost teens each year. We all play a role!

May God encourage you as you continue to participate in the spread of the gospel among teens.

Together,

Jameson