Zambia Camp Convention - Saturday

Over 300 youth gathered from different parts of Zambia and several from across the borders for a weekend of both natural and spiritual blessings. Expectation was sky high, and as you can well tell God did not disappoint His children. Hebron Tabernacle had a youth Convention Camp scheduled for April 17th to 20th at a local boarding school called Lusaka West School.

On arrival we youths were allocated rooms and got settled before they had supper and a short welcome service. The full Program was to begin the very next day!

On Saturday, the day started real early, devotions were at 5:00am. We had such a wonderful time, singing and talking to the Lord in the twilight for half an hour. The air was crisp and fresh the morning star bright and outstanding giving us assurance that the S-U-N was surely on its way!

Showers and a good breakfast preceded the highlight of the Day; the Tape Service. At the beginning Pastor Ronnie Kapisha welcomed the youths and encouraged the young people to serve God and enjoy the days of their youth in The Lord according to Eccl. 12. He introduced several guests from around Zambia and some youths from Zimbabwe including Pastor Nkoma from Kitwe who had accompanied the young people from his church, Brother Stephen & Jonah Tutani who had come from VGR Zimbabwe for the special gathering. Quiet Time was the next well anticipated event on the program. From the Global Quiet Time sessions, which most of the youth had attended, everyone seemed to know how to approach it and what to expect. Everyone delved right into it and began fellowshipping with The Lord. As the grey clouds drifted overhead, this awesome sereneness descended upon the campus, some read their Bibles or Spoken Word booklets, others were deep in silent prayer communing with the Lord; altogether a wonderful time and such a perfect preparation for the service that morning.

After Quiet Time, Brother Stephen led a few good songs. The room seemed to immediately erupt into spontaneous praise and worship. As we sang Only Believe we could not hide our expectation, the air was charged and we could feel it. On the menu that morning was the sermon Be Certain Of God 59–0125, stored up manna from the Golden Pot to be served; Spiritual Food In Due Season!

“And it reads like this…” Brother Branham said, then he went on to bring the message. We were in for it.

It seemed God had opened the windows of heaven that particular morning and His blessings were falling free. The tape was extremely clear and every word that Malachi 4 spoke came with a great deal of feeling and sincerity that could be felt by the listener. The audience’s firm response and keen attentiveness showed the Word was being assimilated. At the end of the tape, Brother Branham prayed for us and the emphatic responses showed just how much we believed that prayer for ourselves. At the very end he started the song My Faith Looks Up to Thee. After the tape, we continued to sing this song in deep worship. Words falter if we were to try and explain how the Holy Spirit moved in to bathe every believer and confirm the words just spoken through God’s Servant, our Prophet, Brother Branham. We broke through in prayer and prayed as if this was the last prayer we’d ever make. God was present, the prophet had confessed our sins, and we were entitled to every blessing Christ died for. Nothing could stand in our way. Receive we did, by His Grace. Another song had to be sung to bring us back and allow us to proceed with the program.

In groups of ten we tackled a Quiz on the tape that had just been a blessing to us. Twenty multiple choice questions were answered in ten minutes. Each of the thirty one groups completed their quiz, came back inside and passed their answer sheet to the next group for scoring/marking while the answers were called from up front. Oohs & aaahs filled the room coupled with excited jubilant yells and a few inevitable wails of regret. In the end 11 groups scored a top score of 19 out of 20! Sudden challenge questions were poised at the teams, ultimately eliminating all but one group. The winners were given really cool prizes from YF, iPod Nanos with a play button to be put to good use! One of the winning sisters said for a while she’d been so desiring yet struggling to get a mobile gadget where she could play tapes, but this had seemed almost impossible and several attempts to make this a reality had failed, but in HIS time He made all things beautiful. Satan’s in trouble now!

There was an uproarious applause when it was announced that VGR had provided lunch for the young believers. The fries, chicken pieces, drinks, fruit, and water made a feast fit for a king! Mounds of it were quickly leveled flat! Spiritually & naturally nourished youths left the cafeteria to enjoy a few hours of free time for fellowship and games. This was done in earnest, nothing was held back as netball, basketball, volleyball, dodgeball, skip ropes and a whole lot of other local inventions lit the place up for the next few hours. There was such a joyful, free and unreserved atmosphere around the place, for where the Spirit of The Lord is, there is Liberty.

At dusk, the games had to come to an end, paving way for showers and a good supper. Following supper was the final event of the Day, a VGR/YF presentation. Brother Stephen took us on a journey with a set of arranged slides, pictures, facts, statistics and videos of VGR’s burden and work around the world. We began by defining a prophet and his relevance to a generation. The youth read out loud scriptures like Amos 3:7, Jeremiah 1:5, Revelations 10:7 Malachi 4:5; highlighting the importance of the Word to the believer in each generation. It’s the infallible weapon that Jesus, God in flesh, our example used to overcome the enemy in every one of his advances. Every believer must have the Word if they are to overcome, and that Word according Scripture comes to the prophet. He went on to the vision given to the prophet to store up the food and how the food would be needed in the days to come; How the tape ministry started and has continued over the years. We looked into the production, the distribution, translation work, and how God has allowed technological advancement to accelerate and be successfully harnessed to spread this Message. While pictures and video clips of the books being printed and cassettes being duplicated were being shown, wonderful sounds proceeded from the audience and the dots connected. We saw how the material we hold so dear is made available. In a nutshell, it really shed light and added a lot of value to the material we receive. What a testimony it is how the Lord has serviced this burden and seen it through difficult years, because it is THUS SAITH THE LORD, the Word will get to the hands of the predestinated and God makes a way!

YF was the second section of the presentation. We loved it and enjoyed the videos showing the early days of YF around the white board, Banquets around the world (we particularly loved the Zambia Banquet bit!), joining together for Global Quiet Time around the world, Still Waters Camp, Creations, whew! so much is going on its unbelievable! The burden: to encourage us young believers in our walks with Christ.

A few questions were asked when the time was availed. The presentation was highly informative, illuminating and simply a blessing. It is mind blowing how God looked through time and seen this time where there is such a hunger for the true Word, but like a responsible Father would, God made provision for His children. Just like it was with Joseph in the Old Testament, the garners are full and the stored up food is feeding the hungry in this time of spiritual famine. Come and Dine!

After this service, we each got a snack and it was officially bedtime. We retired to bed after a FULL day. We could’ve asked for no better! Tomorrow was going to be another notable day, we were under great expectation!