SYC - Day 5 [My Final Day]

Day 5 - Friday 11 January 2008 [The Departure]
So here we are, the final day of SYC. It begins like any other day, I slowly wake up, body clock woke me up naturally, I still had my headphones in my ear, it wasn't 7am yet so I took advantage of the headphones in my ears and played music to give me a good start to the day. Part way through my alarm goes off in my ears "The vengabus is coming...", I turn it off, back to Muse it goes and I continue to rest my eyes. But alas we have to get up and clear the rooms and pack our bags, which I get to and do pretty quick, all while Daniel Hastie laid asleep, or as asleep as he can be with everyone talking making noise and Nelson coming by with his laptop blaring Survivor by Destiny's Child while telling people to wake up and probably saying it was 30 minutes to 8am. And it was quite fitting, I did feel like a survivor, I got through the week without giving up (although I had a minor thought during day 1 or 2) or being completely demoralised or anything like that, a big part of that was probably the youth I got in my dorm, so thank you guys!

We clear the room and move our bags to the hall then head off to breakfast which I guessed was bacon and eggs, only because we hadn't had it during the week, it was inevitable. The bacon was real, the toast was real, but the egg was not disappointingly but understandably, in a non-caring-its-last-day-of-SYC kind of way. I eat then go and prepare the last powerpoint slides for Chapel and listen to the band practice. We had extra time to practice today while the youth do a clean up of the grounds, so thank you youth! We went through all the songs and the last song "Your Grace is Enough" was especially cool as the band rocked it out so I was looking forward to seeing the band play for the youth and have an awesome rocked out ending to SYC.

Chapel Time looked at Revelation 20:11-15, the last book in the bible. And I suppose we were all faced with something that everyone knows about, jokes about, cries about, thinks about, talks about and goes about trying to avoid...death. We all know that in the end we will die, we don't know when, we don't know how but we like to think that it would be when we are old and supposedly 'ready', but we all know better, even though we don't want to, things happen and we can go just like that. This passage however, looks at what happens after death, which presents you the question of, where will you go? Will your name be in the Book of Life, allowing you to go to Heaven or will your name not be there, leaving you to endure a second death, in Hell? Some people think about it, some people don't, some respond, some ignore. People often have the mindset that we have one life, and so we should live life to the fullest, having the most fun you can have, earning the most money you can, buying the best you can buy, just getting as much as you can out of life for yourself before you fall over and die. But we don't have just one life, we have something after death, an afterlife, or post-death life, a 1up with a twist, and when you use the 1up, where will it take you? Heaven or Hell? You might not care where you go, as long as you have fun now, in the 80 or so years on this Earth, but all I know is that eternity is a lot lot longer than 80 or so years, and if I can have a good time for eternity, I'd go for that (that's not to say I can have a good time now of course). So how do we get to Heaven? If you've been reading my past blogs (I hope you have been) you should know that it is only through Jesus that we can have eternal life in Heaven. We submit to Jesus as our ruler and rescuer, and we start by praying to him. Praying being how we talk to God, we pray for God to change us, to submit to Jesus and our ruler, and to rely on Jesus for forgiveness for our sins and for eternal life. And it would go a little something like this...

Dear God,

I know that I'm a sinner, I am sorry for my sins.
Please forgive me for sinning against you.
Thank you that you sent your one and only son Jesus to die on the cross to pay the penalty for me. Please come into my life and help me to live with Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
Amen

So what now? If you prayed the prayer let someone know! Don't keep it a secret! Throw a comment, email, whatever, just let someone know so we can further help you.

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to end with "Our Grace is Enough", which was somewhat disappointing but we survived with the memory of the rehearsal. Following chapel time was our final small group question time, which ended up being a good long talk with Cam Phong, so I didn't do much. And soon it came time to take photos to remember our time here, and who came and all that. We took a picture of the youths first...


Ah, classy

Then added a bit of leaders...

Good flavouring [Stolen from Kitty's Facebook, better quality photo will be up eventually]

Mix and you get...

Something Mucky! [Same as before, better quality photo will be up eventually]

We took the details down for youths who wanted to buy the SYC DVD, featuring the talks, concert night, and other videos taken throughout the camp. So that should be a fun watch when it gets done. And then it was time for the youth to go, but before they went we took a photo of our dorm group, for memory sake...


Such awesomeness, if only I looked at the right camera/time

And then we decided to send them off the best way we leaders knew how...


And they're off!

And just when you thought that was all, there's more chase scenes!


Tired much?

The leaders re-grouped and had our debrief, talking about what worked and what didn't work, which only made me look forward to the next SYC all the more. We then took a group photo with the leaders, first the normal photo...

My attempt at an S fan, more like a Z fan though...

Then the muck up photo...

Cards Everywhere! [Thanks to Bryan for these photos]

There's like a bunch of photos of this muck up scene, each depicting the various stories it tells, that being Victor shooting the super soaker, Alistair throwing water (you can see what he's about to do in this picture) and my attempt at throwing cards in the air, plus other poses!

We then packed our cars and like Day 0, I tetris'd as much as I could, and this time I took a picture...


So many lines cleared

Then off we drove, I avoided the potholes one last time and 4WD'd the grassy sides then slowed to a crawl as I waited for the others to catch up. Then we followed Cam's car to McDonald's for lunch, I ate healthy because I didn't want to get an upset stomach driving and had the Chicken Ceasar Roll thing and a bottle of water for the drive back. But then water wasn't that great of a drink when you're having McDonalds, I wanted a coke, and with my VIP card I bought a hamburger and got a free coke for $1.75, bargain! My thirst was quenched and I had a burger in case I got hungry during the drive. We then drove to Kiama to visit the blowhole, so the drivers could take a break, unfortunately we only drove around an hour so the rest wasn't all that needed, but it ended up being worth it, despite not going to the actual blowhole...


How little?

Very little actually, so much so you could go down and look inside the hole in all its glory. I didn't go down though, getting wet wasn't part of my plan, and neither was getting my car wet. Others however, were more brave and went down and played a little game called Blowhole Chicken, when the blowhole goes and you run, you're a chicken (obviously). And here is a video of the game, courtesy of Bryan's camera...

Little Blowhole eh... [Thanks to Bryan for the video]

People dried off and then we drove off again, Dewey was in Ian's car, giving Aaron and Claire space to sleep and sleep they did...


Good to know they still had their seatbelts on

At one point I felt sleepy and my eyes were starting to close its blinds, fortunately Jessica was in the passenger seat, providing entertainment, listening to my random comments and complaints about anything and everything I saw, just to keep myself awake. Watching Ian weave in and out of lanes, not accomplishing much was amusing too, and the one time where I overtook everyone just for fun and to see how they were going before they all overtook me back. I prefer to stay in the back anyway, with a 4WD I act as the marker that all cars are here. However, we went from have 6 or so cars to losing Bryan (took a wrong turn), then losing Andrew Ha (drove too slow) then a few others as we got closer to church (different paths taken). But soon enough, we got back, it was 6pm, my hamburger remained uneaten, so I ate it at the church. I un-tetris'd my car, bummed around a bit and said goodbye to everyone. Tired out I drove home, noticing the car was covered in dust/dirt/brownish yellow particles and therefore in need of a shower but would leave that until later. I got home, unpacked and did what every Asian does when they're away from home for a long time, log online...Day 5.

[Special Feature Easter Egg Suprise Extra]
So thats the end of Summer Youth Camp, in a nutshell full of words and not nuts, which isn't that great of a nut if you think about it (can't really eat it) but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Apologies for taking so long in delivering this final day, life has a way of making sure your priorities are straight, but more on that in a later blog.
To me, SYC was quite the awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed it, the talks, the youth, the activities and seeing everything come together and just working was just sensatio. I also realised after I got home that I left my skipping rope at the campsite, which I'll probably never get back. So in the mean time and until next time, here ends the SYC Series...


Group photo from Day 0, I would've looked at the camera but you know, driving.
[Courtesy of Jessica's camera]