Youth Congress held ahead of international camp
(CNS Local Life): A group of 87 Cayman youth and youth counsellors are heading to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Sunday, 11 August, joining some 50,000 other Pathfinders from more than 100 countries at the “Pathfinder Camporee”, which has become “a leadership and spiritual rite-of-passage for youth and adults”, organisers said.
Ahead of the trip the Cayman contingent to the five-day international camp attended the Adventist 2019 Youth Congress held at the Lions Centre, 26-28 July, which featured a 30-member visiting choir. The weekend culminated in a multi-dimensional gospel concert, a press release stated.
The Camporee is held every five years for members of the Pathfinder Club, a nearly two million-member global organisation aimed at “enlarging…windows on the world and building a relationship with God,” organisers said in the release.
The visiting choir members are part of an 80-strong choir based at the Kencot Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica. Choir member Chueyen McIntyre said that he had opted to come to Cayman because “It is part of our role as Christian youth to help other youth.”
Kencot Youth Choir (KYC) director Dianne Boyd said of the visit: “The idea of youth-reaching-youth led to the invitation to the (KYC) to lend their support to Pastor Henry Vaughan, youth ministries director for the Cayman Islands Conference.”
The concert at Sunday’s finale featured a multi-media programme “packed with dramatic interpretations of poems, ballet choreography illustrating gospel music, and high energy choir presentations drawn from a variety of musical genre”, the release stated.
Henry said of the Youth Congress that the weekend’s programme was “considerably magnetised by the visiting choir”, adding, “The weekend event drew the largest turnout of young people I have seen locally – it was staggering.”
The weekend began with a parade of youth from the various churches marking the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the Adventist Church in the Cayman Islands. The Youth Congress continued on Saturday morning with breakout sessions exploring spiritual dimensions. Afternoon workshops focused on topics such as leadership, conflict resolution, and youth and spirituality.
Also on Saturday, the Youth Congress launched the “Adopt-a-Ministry” programme, in which youth organisations in the various local churches committed to adopting a street or community for youth engagement. Henry said that he envisaged these activities would include health clinics, health fairs, and door-to-door contacts.
“The Adventist Church in the Cayman Islands is making serious effort to energise their young people spiritually, reclaim their missing youth, and reach other youth,” Boyd said, goals that boosted the opportunity for KYC’s ministry during their visit.
On Monday, 29 July, KYC members then volunteered for a work day at Cayman Academy. Helping to prepare the campus for the new school year, the choir members painted, cleaned and gardened.
Making it all possible for the 30-member visiting contingent, choir director Boyd said members paid half of their airfare, with the rest contributed by sponsorship and fundraising in Jamaica. Some financial support was provided by the Kencot Church and the East Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. The local Youth Services Department of the Adventist Church arranged accommodation and transportation.
Category: Local News, Religion, Youth
