Inaugural ‘Outback Youth Camp’ brings Alice Springs youth closer to God and to one another

 Your prayers and support are helping a new generation of young people  grow in faith and love. And not even an unusually annoying season of flies can stop it … 

With two team leaders from different denominations, volunteers drawn from five churches, and campers from seven, Alice Springs inaugural Outback Youth Camp, held an hour outside town, was truly an exercise in unity.

Which, it turns out, was exactly what SU Australia Ministry Catalyst Mel Quilliam was hoping the campers would experience.

“We’re such a small [town], we have probably 25,000 people in our community, … I wanted the kids to know who the other Christians were in their schools,  sporting teams, in their community groups.”

“The campers that came along were from a wide variety of different church and cultural backgrounds, which is really great,”  reflects Mel. 

“I think it’s important to give the young people a bigger understanding of what the kingdom of God looks like.”

As well as building unity under Christ, campers were also given opportunities to  grow closer to God through hearing from his word and personal devotion times. 

“We had a speaker who came down from Darwin, and he did four sessions looking at encounters with Jesus after the resurrection,” explains Mel.

“We [also] had a half an hour daily devotion where the kids were encouraged to spend some time on their own, reading their Bibles and praying … and that was quite significant for some kids.” 

While the conditions were at times challenging, with an inundation of flies following the campers (a level of unity that wasn’t helpful) even this didn’t stop campers from growing. 

“There was one year seven boy that I was chatting with who said he’d never actually read the Bible in a devotional way before, and said it was a highlight of camp … he really enjoyed just spending that alone time with God. So that was really exciting,” says Mel. 

Mel also had an encouraging exchange at her home church with another camper who wanted to continue talking to her and the pastor about his questions, showing that the learning taking place at camp impacted his wider life and networks.

“The spiritual content of Camp didn’t stay on camp …  it not only came with him  …  he kept talking with his parents about it, and it became this bigger thing where his opinions were really valued in that space with adults as well. Which is really important,” reflects Mel.

“I think often we treat children and youth like their thoughts about faith are not as important as what adults think, and we forget that the Holy Spirit also speaks to children and young people and so it was really exciting to see that lived out,” says Mel.