The Youth Peace Travel Team at Camp Inspiration Hills

Greetings from Ohio! This week, Peace Team was able to spend time with the Senior High Worship Arts camp at Inspiration Hills. Since we had to lead two Bible Studies each day, we had to think pretty fast on our feet and come up with some new ideas about what we could do.

One way we did this was by creating a whole new session, specific to their camp: Peacebuilding Through the Arts. We talked with the group about how performance can be used to transform conflicts and violence, and we practiced it by creating situations of conflict that the group got to act our and resolve by using “tools” of peacemaking, like understanding, listening, and love.

The session went super well, but the best part didn’t come until the next night at the all-camp campfire session that we led on bullying. Each family group was instructed to intervene in and try to end a scene of bullying that Peace Team acted out. Most groups tried separating Hunter and Molly or having them talk out the conflict. We had predetermined which groups were doomed to fail and which were going to succeed. The Worship Arts kids were supposed to fail, but none of us were prepared for what they were going to do. When they got up, their group had one member act as a German foreign exchange student who felt like getting ice cream would solve the problem. The hilarity of it took all of us aback, and the conflict that had been occurring completely diffused! It was so awesome to see the Worship Arts kids use some of the tools that we had talked about before, and to know that our last minute session truly made an impact!

Peace–Katie

Meet the 2011 Youth Peace Travel Team!

On Monday, we entered the lodge at Camp Inspiration Hills near Burbank, Ohio that would be our home for a week and it smelled like Pine-Sol. By Friday morning of our orientation, it didn’t smell like Pine-Sol anymore because we made it our home. We lived, ate, worked, slept, and prayed there. It become our base camp for deeply exploring the gospel of peace proclaimed by our Savior. We sank into couches while mentors poured the Good News into our eager souls. We soaked it all in with the fascination of children. The fortunate thing here is that we are children. We are children of God. Something akin to child-like energy spreads from person to person like a spark kindling fires of inspiration. Our piney lodge is where this “summer of sparks” starts. And, it must never end, for our job is to continuously pursue the Kingdom of God on earth by spreading the fragrance of Jesus wherever we journey.

Peace be with you, from the 2011 Youth Peace Travel Team: Kay Guyer, Tyler Goss, Sarah Neher, and Mark Dowdy! Spread it!

-MD