Interns are in an immersive community experience

Each year, Camp Coolamatong has the amazing gift and opportunity of journeying with a group of young people as they embark on our internship. Interns with varied gifts and personalities that come from different countries, backgrounds, church traditions and places in their understanding of where Jesus fits into their lives or where they fit into his big story.

Interns are in an immersive community experience during their time here, where there are great opportunities for them to journey with many others as they deepen in their faith and grow in character. Every staff member seeks to be a part of that journey. Interns are also matched with a volunteer mentor from one of the local churches and are a part of daily sessions with the Coolamatong team of prayer and engagement with the Bible.

One of my favourite stories during my time at Coolamatong is of an intern named Matt. Matt had grown up attending church but had a pretty cruisy approach to life and hadn’t really decided to own a faith for himself. He was a great part of the team but didn’t seem to engage fully with the faith side of things. He didn’t appear to give much thought to answers in Bible studies, not asking too many questions, but nevertheless having a pretty fun time at Coolamatong. He probably would have told you that the food, especially chocolate milkshakes, was the best thing about the internship.  We sought to love him, show him how and why Jesus was the centre of our lives, and guide him in character and life growth.

Matt finished up, seemingly not a whole lot further along the faith journey than when he started. Then, at 12.09 am on 22 January 2017, I got one of my favourite text messages ever.

Matt has continued to follow Christ, and we have been able to be a part of that journey, mostly from afar as he returned to Melbourne to train as a carpenter, get married and work. In the last couple of years we have been blessed to have Matt return as our Maintenance Manager and see him invest in the growth of many more interns as they invest a year at Camp Coolamatong.