Twenty years and we can and often do report the good which has happened: most of all, God’s faithfulness to this His ministry! He has done great things! We’ve no doubt, He desires to do more. From the very start, we knew follow-up with campers to be key and have followed up with the resources of people available, but this has not been enough. We love to report how campers are touched by the Spirit in this place to accept the gospel and acknowledge Jesus as Savior and LORD. Harder to share is that just as young plants have needs in order to grow, they go home as baby Christians into hard soil lacking proper sunshine, water, and food and they wither and fall away. Others leave the camp environment with only a slight understanding and need IV’s immediately to ward off further infection by the world and its forces of evil and to open their hearts to life everlasting.
Practically everything I could possibly say about the importance of the follow-up aspect of this ministry has already been said by Amy Carmichael, pioneer missionary to India, in her book THINGS AS THEY ARE first published in 1903. In Chapter VI she writes of a vision which played out like a nightmare.
“…I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass… towards a precipice with no bottom, black and of “unfathomable depths”. …All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.”
“Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge…then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned…”
“…I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned towards the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise… There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go… Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called—but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass… And then they sang a hymn…What does it matter, after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years…God forgive us! God arouse us!”
Across the street not too far from where you live today youth and families are blindly heading toward the precipice. Eagles’ Wings needs prayer warriors willing to apply themselves to more than an occasional mention of God’s work here. Those who would set aside a definite time, a half hour or so per day, praying for Eagles’ Wings youth and families to turn to saving faith in God by the hundreds. Others need to answer the call to join us as mentors. Satan is working overtime. When will we? For this were saved; for this we are blessed!