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Michael Faulkner Jr.

Suzan Ingram
UWRIT 1101
23 September 2014

Church Camp: A Testimony

Christianity, or God as you can say, has completely changed my life in every
aspect. As a Christian, I believe in the Word of God (the Bible), and I believe that in the
beginning there was God, and that God created us in His image, but because of our sinful
nature, God sent his son Jesus Christ down to Earth to die for our sins and to give us
everlasting life only if we ask him to come into our hearts. As I have grown in my faith
over the past few years, I have become closer to God, and I believe that reading the Bible
and praying to God has greatly defined my history of literacy.
Before I ever accepted Christ, or even knew what it was like to be a Christian, I
was just a normal teenage kid who did go to church, but I never really knew why we did
the whole going to church thing. Was it to show that we were good people? Was it the
thing to do? Why did I even have to go, and who was this so-called God that everyone
talked about? It wasnt until the year of 2012 that I realized the true meaning of Church
and why it was important to me. In that year, my family and I had joined a local church
in our community, Christian Fellowship Chapel. This church was not only an eye-opener
to my family and me, it was a place where we could fellowship with great people and
understand the true Word of God. Starting off was sort of challenging, and having to
wake up earlier every Sunday was even tougher; however, now I am so excited to get up

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every Sunday and fellowship and worship with my friends and family. Soon enough I
joined the youth group at my church, and I started to become more involved with the
church and my community. The youth group was like family to me, it was a place where
I could be myself and where I could feel at home. My youth pastor, Kenny Bo Dotson,
was an awesome minister; he had a wife, Tyra Dotson, and three younger kids, Cooper,
Chloe, and his oldest, Savanna. Kenny worked in distribution at MDI in Hickory, NC,
and his part time job was not only being a father of his own kids, but of his twenty other
kids: his youth ministry. He had been a youth pastor for eight years at Christian
Fellowship, and was currently going to school part-time to become an ordained minister,
where he could further his walk and discover his real calling from God. Bo and his
family played an important role in my Christian life and they were usually the ones that I
would go to for help or just for words of wisdom. They were the reason I enjoyed
coming to youth bible study; but most importantly, it was God who was using them as a
tool in my life.
It all started in the summer of 2012; this was my first mission trip that I had ever
been on. My youth group was so excited and I didnt even know what to expect from it,
all I knew is that I was going to do some missionary work to help reconstruct a home.
The youth group was designated to work in Coperhill, Tennessee, with a missionary
ministry group known as Team Effort. Team Effort is a non-profit inter-denominational
Christian ministry organization that has been serving in the US for over 20 years, and
they offer opportunities for youth groups to put their faith into action through challenging
and rewarding mission projects. Our mission site was located about twenty minutes from
camp and the mission was to serve a family of three children on low-income support, and

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to help them reconstruct a leaking roof and clean up their landscape that was way
overgrown. From what all I had heard to be done, it was a lot of dang work.
On the first day of camp, we started the day with a morning worship celebration
and breakfast. The morning worship celebration was to get you pumped as you could
say, for the day and for serving the local community families that God had placed us
with. After the celebration, we would go back to our cabins so we could pray and
prepare for our mission work that day, and then we headed to our mission sites and met
the families that we were going to serve. The home that my youth group worked at was
really old and it needed a lot of repair, more repair than just a weeks worth, considering
the work: replacing the roof, cleaning out the landscape, replacing the windows, cutting
down dead trees, and cleaning out several sheds. Overall, this place was a wreck, and we
only had a week to repair it, or at least fix the leak. In discovering this, we as a youth
group had to work as a team and most importantly, work on Gods team and help this
family recover their foundation.
Throughout the week I not only grew closer to my youth group but I grew closer
to knowing who God was and why he had placed me to work at this camp. I knew there
was a reason, but I just could not figure it out. As the week went on and as I continued to
go to the morning and evening services, I began to really listen to the words of the
message and the words that I was singing during worship. The message for the week
was: What is your baggage? as baggage, they meant: the things that were holding you
back, or the things that were keeping you from having relationships with other people,
but most importantly, what was keeping you from God. These services and messages
had me questioning my faith and questioning who I really was at the time, but really I

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didnt know where I belonged or what was the point of all of this Christian stuff. I
talked with others in my youth group and with my pastor Bo that week, and was curious
about life in general and its purpose. Then, I began to read the Bible, which seemed so
irrelevant at the time, and as I started to read, something had opened my eyes as I read the
verse of John 3:16, For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever shall believe in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. This verse
had revealed to me that God had given me life and a purpose, and that if I could just
believe in Him and His son Jesus Christ, that I would be saved from all of my sins and
would have the gift of eternal life. Wow, this is why God has lead me here, I had
thought. I just knew that something was missing inside, from all the regret and
forgiveness that I had been dealing with, God had given me a chance to take it all away
and to pick me up off my feet. He had given his Son to die on a cross and to be crucified
for the redemption of my sin, and for all of His people. Isnt that an amazing thing!
It was the last day of camp, and I woke up that morning feeling so excited and
energetic, and I was enthusiastic to get to work for the last day! I felt changed! We
actually had a chance to finish our work, we just had to strive for our ambition and
continue to pray. We had finished the landscaping and cleaning out the sheds, now we
just had to finish repairing the roof. The roof needed a new valley for water drainage, but
the parts were not available, so we had to call the parts in and prepare the roof. Once the
parts had came in, we only had a couple hours of work to complete it, so we had to bust
our butts to get it done! In conclusion, we finally finished our mission project and the
family was so thankful and appreciative for our hard work and duty for Christ. It was

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such a feeling of joy being able to spend a week of serving those who are in need and
glorifying Christ through this mission work.
As the last night of camp rolled around, all of the youth groups were to gather
together in this large grassy field that was near the center of camp. This was a time of
prayer, a time of one-on-one with God, and a time to lay down anything that had been
convicting our hearts. As we gathered in the field, their was a group of leaders standing
near a campfire singing beautiful worship songs, and behind them stood a large wooden
cross. We talked and prayed with each other for hours; it was an amazing experience.
After we were done praying, we had confession cards that we could write anything down
that had been keeping us from having a relationship with God, our baggage, and then
we nailed it to the wooden cross to symbolize the releasing of our difficulties. Nailing to
the cross was a note card full of my baggage: not being able to fit in with people
having to hear my family argue all the time not knowing my purpose in life lustful
thoughts addiction to ungodly things and really, not knowing the true meaning of
love

Thank you God for your forgiveness and for the redemption of my sin. I love you.

This moment of time had been one of the most humbling experiences of my life, it
was a moment that I had been released from all fear, all sorrow, all regret; it was a
powerful moment, and then I knew from that point on that I had been saved and Jesus
was my Lord and Savior. Ending my experience, I want to share with you the verse that
defines me today: Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer

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live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of
God, who loved me and gave himself for me.