West Bank Bible Camp

Hey this is Ben, The week at westbank was a party and a half. We got the chance to do plenty of activities with the campers like climbing walls, paintballing, and tons of other stuff. The week was also a sweet time cause former RU member, Joel Henderson was the camp speaker. It was all around a great camp with amazing food and tons of sweet memories. I enjoyed paintballing the most, the campers seemed to really enjoy shooting at me for some reason. haha. Yeah it was a really good week and after our show we saw a few kids work through some issues in their lives. It was a super great time and the camp was a fun place to be. sweet times at west bank bible camp.
Ben Fairburn

Hello once again to our dear blog followers!
On the road again, on the road again!! After Circle Square Ranch last week, we headed HOME (well kind of) to Caronport! Home for me, not for everybody. However, the sense of familiarity was something to appreciate. In Caronport we were able to have a good amount of time to relax and rejuvenate for the last two weeks of the tour. However, we did take a good amount of time for meetings and some refining practice. You’d think after doing these dances for almost a year now that we would be pros-BUT believe it or not, we actually get worse at them. SO..this calls for some serious ‘cleaning up’ of our choreography. It was nice to return to the good ol’ green room. The familiar mirrors, green paint, clicky flooring (that likes to unclick on us as we dance), and lovely smell of BO and the flatulent members of the family, were of course refreshing to be around (well, we get the BO and flatulency anywhere actually..). But after 8ish hours we felt pretty satisfied after so much hard work, and the dances once again look rad and shiny clean!
Along with practice, we also had the earliest leadership meetings for next year that RU has ever seen-praise Jesus for His planning and grace! We were able to talk a little bit about what next year will look like, and begin to discuss roles of everybody as there will be at least 6 returning members of RU in the fall.
ALSO, along with being back in Caronport for a couple days means COMMUNITY! I love Caronport, and was so excited to have a few hours most days to visit a few people at least, and my personal favorite-we got to go to CHURCH on Sunday! We do get to go to chapels almost everyday of the summer which is sweet, but that is the first time since APRIL for me since I have been to a full and totally ENGLISH church service (as many of you know, I was in Korea for almost 2 months before this tour, which equals MUCH church, and LITTLE English )! And with my church family too! So I was SO blessed to be able to do that. Also, huge THANK YOU to the families of Caronport that so graciously provided and hosted us for meals while we were home. I love the church 
We’re back on the road again, we left Sunday right after church for Westbank Bible Camp, just outside of Swift Current, and we’re trusting the Lord for energy and strength for the last stretch of the tour. Pray for us please! Love you all! God is GOOD. Amen?
Jacee

Why not you?

Hey everybody!

Today is a day full of rest and bonding, and it's going great so far. The team is in a little rest period, as we have a few days off until we hit our last two camps! The last camp we had the pleasure of being a part of was Circle Square Ranch Bible Camp in Saskatchewan. What a blessing it was!

There were a couple first times for me 1)First time eating cream of wheat and 2)First time experiencing what's called the blob; a large inflatable tube that has one person sit on one end, while the other person (or sometimes two people) jump from a tower, hit the blob, and launch the unsuspecting victim high in the air.....soooo fun!!

At Circle Square, we had the opportunity to hang out with a younger age group of kids while they went about their days, which was nice to be able to share in the joy that they had for life, and for dance. The campers and the staff made us very comfortable, and made time to get to know us. Going to all these different camps and sharing your lives with other people is amazing, but having someone share their own life with you and what God has done or is doing for them is even more important...and I guess that is a big lesson to learn as well; that we are not just going to camps to make people's lives better or pour into them...but that the people we meet at these camps are there as well to build us up, and it's been great to see that in this camp.


As far as what we did, things went great. We had four workshops on Monday, with lots of kids attending and having lots of fun. We performed some pump-up dances when we arrived on Sunday, Want More on Monday and Lost on Tuesday, then left yesterday around noon.

We have the day off today, then we get to practice tomorrow. Tonight we are going to see Step Up 3D as a team, dressed to the nines in Hip Hop, and can't wait!!

Until next time,

Jesse

PS- Title meaning here:
A song I heard from Alli originally, then made alive at this camp.
"Do the robot....Jean Paul Chenoupier....Ahh! Banana....Hey Diddly Diddly Diddly....Yaba Daba, Hoggy Doggy....Escidily-ot 'n dot....Bobo Scadeet 'n dot....and why not you?"

" WOW that is so cool!" at Camp Arnes...

Hello once again friends and family!


It’s Shereen back on blogging duty to report all the amazing things God has done this week at Camp Arnes! So we arrived Sunday afternoon after a pretty long drive from Caronport to a very hospitable facility. Let’s just say we were pretty pampered all week and blessed in so many ways by the Arnes staff and volunteers. We were basically given hotel rooms with our own bathrooms and laundry service. This was all fine and dandy but some of us were feeling a little discouraged because of not being in the cabins with the campers, so connecting was a little difficult. But nonetheless God gave us amazing opportunities to connect with some kids in our dance workshops! So back in Redberry we had about 20 kids who signed up for every workshop, at Arnes we had 2 kids in the morning workshop and 3 in the afternoon. We prayed A LOT about how to do these workshops and seeking God’s will in them. And let’s just say they turned out to be AMAZING!! The morning workshop consisted of 2 girls who were very optimistic and gave us the marvelous idea of doing a NINJA DANCE! Might I add that this dance turned out to be EPIC and we got the chance to perform it before our big show. The afternoon workshop consisted of about 3 special needs kids and their helpers. These special needs kids were such a blessing to our team, and we cannot express how much we appreciated these kids. They were so amazing and absolutely loved music and of course the dancing. God especially gave me a huge heart for these kids and just watching them dance brought us soo much joy!

So on Monday night we were scheduled to do one character from our show “Want More” and perform at chapel. The night proceeded with some worship but what we didn’t know was that there was a huge storm going on outside! All the kids were either in the Wigwam ( chapel) or the dining hall. The storm caused the power to cut out during worship but everyone continued to sing and praise God without music! So since there was no power we couldn’t perform but God had other plans. When chapel was over we went outside to quickly find out that the storm had knocked over trees everywhere and even lifted half of a roof off a building! There was quite a bit of damage but all of the kids’ cabins, the Wigwam and the dining hall were safe! Nobody had a clue that all of this was going on during chapel, but even then God kept everyone safe!

Another cool thing that we noticed at Camp Arnes was the amount of DRAGONFLIES everywhere!!! All summer we have been eaten alive by mosquitoes the size of cats and have been praying that God would send dragonflies to eat them! And He did! These dragonflies overpopulated the whole camp and we never had to worry about mosquitoes or mosquito spray. Praise the LORD!!


And thanks to the Arnes staff many of us got to the opportunity to get over our fear of HEIGHTS! They had an amazing high ropes course and zip line. They were UNREAL! They were about 20 to 30 feet off the ground, and once we were harnessed in we had to climb the pole all the way to the top and concur different obstacles. They were soo much fun and we were soo incredibly blessed by the Arnes staff.

Well that was our week in a nutshell, God did incredible things and still continues to do so! We would really appreciate if you guys could pray for strength and energy for the team as this camp tour is coming close to an end, and also a zeal to serve the Lord in whatever He calls us to do. God is good and this tour is proof of that! Thanks for following the blog and your prayers! We greatly appreciate it!

Your sister in Christ,
Shereen

A week to chill, kill, take a pill, and be still

Hey Everyone! It’s Sammy here!
You know in the bible when it says God knows what you need before you even ask him… well I am pretty sure that coming into this week God knew that we were in need of some serious rest and family time, because before we knew it camp #6 was no longer in play… thus leaving our team with a week off to fully rejuvanate. So after returning to Caronport the team all dispersed in different directions. Adrian, Jacee and Jesse all headed off for Alberta. There Jacee was able to reconnect with a lot of her extended family, as she joined them to celebrate her grandparents surprise 45th anniversary! Jesse was also able to surprise his parents…which followed in a flow of joyous waterworks (hehe sorry Geri). Jonah spent sometime with his cousin and also spent sometime back at his reserve. Not only that but he came back sporting a nice new haircut, some fancy shorts and a really brown tan:> Shayla headed off to the lake, wakeboarding, fishing and spending some sweet quality time with her sister and brother in law. Shereen also got to go home where she relaxed and hung out with the fam. As for me I was so pumped to have my two buds Ben, and Alli roadtrip it out to S’toon with me for what was to be a week of a lot of laughs and adventures! Going home although I knew would be fun would also be somewhat hard. As many of you know my family has been through a lot these past two weeks as my Step mom Dawn passed away after her battle with cancer. First off I just wanted to say thank you all for all your prayers and support for my family. I have never truly understood what it meant to be a part of the Body of Christ until this summer. To know that there were at least 3 camps praying for my family, parents and friends of R.U., my church family, various people from all over the map, and I am sure many more that I was unaware of, is unreal. I can’t explain how I have been feeling this past two weeks except to say that the power of prayer is huge and God has given me so much peace and acceptance of the situation. So thank you so so much. I think my family really enjoyed having the three of us there too. We were able to spend time with all of my siblings. Quading, playing video games, jumping on the trampoline, biking, and having a campfire all while chasing the little ones around. That to say we were very tired by the end of the day. Hey I rhymed. I believe God is teaching us all a lot this summer. If I could share one thing that I have really learnt from this past month is that Jesus is my everything. There is no way I would have been able to come back to camps the way I did being physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted without God giving me a hopeful, and focused spirit. I also believe that Dawn lived those 7 years of battling cancer not because her physical body allowed her too but because her spirit was always “rarin to go”. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
Thank you for your support!
Sammy

Redberry is the Best!

Well, we have hit our half way mark! And boy has it been an adventure! God has blessed us more than we ever thought He would. We have many stories of heart breaking situations with teen campers and their glorious victory as they surrender their lives to God and desire to follow Him. God has been so gracious to our team in allowing us to be part of this tour, to meet incredible camp staff, directors, and campers. Each week at camp has given us unbelievable memories, lasting relationships and challenges at which to overcome and grow stronger from. He has been so faithful by giving us the rest we need and the perseverance to continue on when we are exhausted. We all consider it a privilege to be tested and tried for our King in order to bring Him Glory and develop our character.
We are currently at Redberry Bible Camp, North of Saskatoon, SK. We have just spent an amazing week with some incredible campers and staff! We got to experience a small glimpse of God’s power through a incredible thunder/rain/hail storm! This caused a flash flood and a river to run through the middle of our camp! Check out our website for the pictures! Refinedundignified.com
But even greater than the power in the storm, we were able to witness the power of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of campers during the response time after the performance of our full show of “Lost” on Thursday night. I (Adrian) spoke after the show about hiding and how good this generation is at settling for things don’t satisfy, I talked about John 10:10 which says that the theft comes to STEAL, KILL, AND DESTROY lives and I asked them if they felt that their life had been stolen, then I told them the good news that Jesus came to give us TRUE LIFE, LIFE ABUNDANT.
Alli and I led worship and invited campers to come forward for prayer. It was apparent that the Holy Spirit was present! Slowly campers came to the front and soon the whole place was crying and seeking repentance. After an hour of this there was an awakening and the whole place became a dancing celebration! God is SOOOO good! And we are so blessed that He allows us to be able to be a part of His plan and to be able to see the fruit first hand is an added bonus! Hearing testimonies from different cabin leaders the next day, we were excited to hear we had a handful of NEW brothers and sisters in the LORD, and far more who rededicated their lives to God!
Keep praying for us, many of us are sick and exhausted from pouring out into the lives of these teens but God is so faithful, we know He will provide exactly what we need. We have been able to relax this weekend, resting by the pool, doing a half-way debrief of the tour with the whole team and eating really good food. The college camp that was planned for next week was actually cancelled so we have been given the whole week off. We have decided to go our own ways and meet back up as a team next Saturday and head out to Camp Arnes, North of Winnepeg. Thank you for your support, we couldn’t do this without your prayers! God bless.

Adrian

Ranger Lake!

Hello all!
Well it's been a lovely tour so far! So intense, super rad, energy-draining, and incredible!
Last week we were at Ranger Lake Bible Camp, close to Saskatoon. We did daily workshops, did dances at each night chapel portraying our different characters, and did a big show at the last night! We got to stay in our own cabins this week (girls and guys) which was an unexpected but really nice break after Madge Lake. That week was really incredible for me, especially because 6 people i went to highschool with were there, most from my grad class of 2008! Most I have seen since grad, but it was just really great to reconnect with old friends! It was also a challenging (good challenging) week, as we weren't in cabins with campers this week, we had to be really intentional about connecting with campers. I sat down with one cabin at lunch the first day, and was hooked right from there! I spent my week with this great cabin of girls, mostly eating meals with them and hanging out. I connected really well with one girl who was special needs in the cabin, and she was such a sweet heart and blessing to me. I was also asked to lead a morning devo in that cabin, and I really believe God spoke through me, the topic was His love for us. Broad, I know, but it was so good! One girl in that cabin, comes from a really rough background and life, came to know Christ this week after our show which was INCREDIBLE to hear! I ended up getting some food poisoning for the last couple days we were there, right after our show, but God made me well pretty quick. It was an awful 30 ish hours though.
Before coming out to Redberry Bible Camp, where we are now, we took a detour and took the team to my grandparents cabin at Jackfish Lake. We spent the day at the cabin, swimming, resting, burning, and eating food. It was a really restful Saturday! My Grandma' prayer before we came was that we would each receive what we needed there from the Lord. It was SO good, and an extra special blessing for me because I got to be at my favorite place in the world, see my Grandma, and have her meet my team this year because she hadn't yet! God is so GOOD and He KNOWS what we need, seriously.
And now we are at Redberry Bible Camp, which you will hear all about later!
Blessings everybody! Please continue to pray for us, especially energy and health as most of the team is sick but still going hard! We have a week off next week, so that will be good for rest!
Your fellow servant in Christ,
Jacee!