Looking back, I’m really glad I listened to mom to apply to RYLA(Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) and got selected to go. It was at Ness Lake Bible Camp. I was really lucky I guess since West Vancouver Rotary group wanted to send two representatives on short notice and I happen to be the few who didn’t have any commitments to anything. Going to Prince George(North of Vancouver) was leaving my comfort zone as I had no idea where that was. There were two other guys from Vancouver on the flight with me, Chris T and Dekker. Chris just got back from Ghana on a media internship there and Dekker is part of RoterAct at Burnaby. When I got off the plane and I walked out into the open I knew that Prince George was going to be a small town. There were a lot of trees nearby and the camp was at a forestry area. There were a total of 22 participants there coming mostly from nearby cities like Quesnel. People came from different backgrounds 19-25 age group, two forest firefighters, 1 taekwon do teacher, 1 high school business teacher, a webpage designer, 2 reporters, 1 spa owners, couple students at UNBC. etc. The director was Mary Anne a grandmother with an awesome, funny, and inspiring personality. A social worker by nature, she wanted to make a difference in the world. She became heavily involved with truck safety among loggers and reduced the number of deaths. She also helped create a camp for Native Americans reaching out to the children. Her story of working on a vision and talking to more and more people, receiving funding to make it happen was inspiring. What I learned was to take action now and not just sit around. We shared interesting quotes during a breakfast that was given to us and was asked to explain the meaning of it. I saved two of them.
“Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure”- Kal Menninger
“The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.” – Horace Bushnell
1. With the first one I think the meaning of it is life in general is really hard. There are ups and downs we need to face daily. It is important for us to overcome these challenges and solving them instead of letting them consume us. When we do solve more and more problems these problems that used to be so big to us are now small in nature. Life doesn’t seem as bad when problems are solved in fact it gets brighter.
2. Difficulties in life may not be bad at all. It is a test for us to seek deeper meaning to dig deeper in finding the main roots of a problem. If my life didn’t have any difficulties I think it wouldn’t be exciting. If one day I did face a problem I would not be ready to bear it. For my life, the main struggle form me has been my eczema. I am oversensitive towards everything, the environment and food. It effects my self esteem and also my health. But through this process of trial and error I have learned more and more about food that are healthy for the body such as Kefir- a pro-biotic that encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut, destroys yeast, and improves the immune system. http://nationalkefirassociation.com/Library.aspx
Fruits that are healthy for healing- Apple, grape fruit, lemon, carrots, beets.
Had I not struggled with this, I don’t think I would’ve even knew or cared about healthy food.
We did a lot of fun stuff at the camp such as Canoeing, Zip-lining(first time), and camp fire singing together old school songs. We sang “Cat’s in the Cradle” which brought a flash back moment to me. It reminded me of a bible study message we did back in college on this song. It was pretty sad, as it’s about a dad who didn’t spend enough time with his young son. Time is ticking by, the son at different stages of his life approaches his dad but his dad is just so busy with business. The boy grows up and lives his own life and does the same as his dad, becoming busy with life. I guess the message of the song is not to devote every piece of you into your career, that family is also pretty important.
Three days was quite short, but I felt like I got a lot of it. I was really energized by everyone who was there. Inspired to do good in this world. Since I came back I joined two concert bands: West Van Concert Band, and Burnaby Metropolitan Band. I plan to check out a RotarAct club soon. Time to get more involved with Vancouver!
Super dangerous slide that we didn’t get a chance to try.
Beautiful sky.
Pretty Ness Lake.
Discussion
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