ACET Essay

**Okay, so here’s my ACET essay. Finally. I haven’t edited it yet, so don’t expect much. Haha! Comment please! Thank you!

The first time I got involved in our church’s missions ministry, I volunteered to be one of the couselors for the urban poor youth camp we sponsored last April.

I didn’t plan to join this camp when our youth leader invited us to join before summer started. I didn’t believe I’d be able to “rough it out”, which was how he described what we’d have to do there. It wasn’t going to be like our youth camps, where the rooms were comfortable, and the food was great. The way he told it, this camp was going to be a lot simpler. Too simple for me to handle, I thought. So I decided I’d pass, and put it out of my mind.

I didn’t think about the camp again until around March, when I was planning to volunteer for our children’s church camp. It suddenly came to my mind that the main reason I was volunteering for the children’s camp was because I knew it was going to be a lot of fun. Sure, I also wanted to serve God by helping out, but that was the added perk. I remembered my reasons for not going to the urban poor youth camp: It might be too hard for me, and it’s going to be very uncomfortable. I realized that I’ve been serving God at my convenience, and that had to stop. I knew God wanted me to go to that camp, and I made up my mind to do so.

The first day of camp finally came on April 9. I woke up that morning really nervous, wondering what I got myself into. My mom drove me to church, where the volunteers from our area were going to be fetched by the pastor who invited us to take us to Gethsemane Prayer Mountain, in Montalban Rizal. After an hour on the road, we arrived at the venue.

When we got there, we saw the 200+ campers we were going to be with for the next four days.

After being oriented, we were split into small groups.

When I met my small group, I was relieved to find that I had two co-counselors. Both were pastors who already knew some of the campers.

I had mixed feelings about my counselees. It was a little difficult for me to relate with the girls. Even though there were only four of them, they were all older than I was, and this made me feel very akward about leading our discussions. The boys separated from us during discussions, so I didn’t get to know them very well. Whenever I was with them though, I did my best to stay a good distance from them, because some of them scared me.

One of our boy counselees in particular scared me a lot. The other campers gave him the nickname Joaquin Bordado (and this is what we’ll call him) because of all his tattoos. His arms were covered with them. My friends kept telling me to stay away from him because, as my best friend put it, “He looks at you like he wants to eat you.” And I know that’s exaggerating it a bit, but he did look at me in a way I didn’t like being looked at. I avoided him as much as I could, which was hard, because I was his counselor, and was supposed to be doing the exact opposite. But I stayed away, thinking it was for my own good, and he had my co-counselors to talk to, anyway.

For all four days of that camp, I steered clear of this camper, and whenever I did have to talk to him, I spoke with a detached voice, almost cold. I didn’t want him to think we were going to be friends.

On the last day of the camp, my co-counselors decided to join the girls and boys in our group for our last sharing. One of my co-counselors asked our group if anyone wanted to share their experiences from that camp. Nobody volunteered, probably because we never had joined discussions, and no one was comfortable with opening up to the others. So he looked at our Joaquin Bordado, and asked him if he could tell us a bit about himself.

He didn’t give our group all the details, but we did learn that Joaquin had gotten into some trouble before, and was involved in things he shouldn’t have been. The whole time he was telling us his story, I was looking at Joaquin, and he looked really embarrassed. I don’t know why, but seeing that made me realize how judgmental I was towards not just him, but practically every camper that came.

I went to that camp thinking I was better than everyone else, and that made it impossible for me to really mingle with them and get to know them. I didn’t do what I went there to do, which was to share my God with them. Yes, I attempted to explain everything in that little booklet about salvation. But they didn’t see Christ in me, because I didn’t give them a chance to. There were so many campers in my group who didn’t know Him yet, and I was given the chance to bring them to Him. I missed it, though, because I let my pride get in the way. If there’s one thing I won’t forget about the camp, it’s that it taught me that I have to lose myself for God to take over.

The urban poor youth camp was one thing I’m glad I experienced last summer. It was difficult, and know I made a lousy counselor. But through that God showed me what I needed to change about me to be able to reflect Him better.