What we're Looking Forward to!

With the school year well underway and a new Ozone year starting as well, we reflected on all the great things to come over the next two semesters. Here are a few things you can get excited about too, and join in with us at Ozone!

Cass Trumbo, Bentonville Ozone Director, “Planning for this semester, I'm most excited about the thing that's coming first: PAINT WAR! I understand that sometimes it's hard to jump into club when you're new. It can be awkward. BUT NOT WHEN THERE'S PAINT EVERYWHERE. Paint tears down walls and creates a beautiful, unifying mural in their place. With butterflies. And flower-people. Paint War is a perfect opportunity for any former camper or even passerby to get involved with Ozone. COME SEE FOR YOURSELF!”

Ellie Chase, Bentonville Ozone Director, “I’m most excited for Great Pretenders, our annual lip sync competition. It’s awesome to see the hilarious and creative ideas everyone comes up with and how they choose to perform a song! Plus, the all-city event is the perfect time to see people from everywhere else in NWA and have a blast dressing up.”

Matt Morton, Rogers Ozone Director, “I'm excited for the Spring Break trips!  It's awesome getting to see all of your camp friends from the summer again.  I love the games, the talks, the small groups, and serving the community during this retreat.  It's sweet to give back to the community and to see how much you can get done with that many people!  And… I can't wait for Summit Retreat’s RAVE 2014!!”

Alyssa Hanson, Fayetteville Ozone Director, “I'm really excited about our small groups that meet outside of club. I love studying the Bible together, talking about our successes and struggles, and encouraging each other. I'm excited for all the fun activities we do too, such as playing sports together, attending shows at the Walton Arts Center, cooking with girls at my apartment, and many other things. This is going to be a great year!”

Christine Janssens, Rogers Ozone Director, “I am so excited  about regular club events picking up again this year. Club is such a fun time to see the same people each week, build lasting relationships, learn truth, and have fun! The friendships that are established during this time is a blessing to be a part of, and I am so excited to see who else the Lord brings to join us each week for club!”

Erin Wiltse, Springdale Ozone Director, “I’m most excited about beginning a new year of the LEAD program for students and partnering with Mosaic Church. The opportunities that both of those things present excite me: seeing young adults discipled and pushed to be leaders, and having more influence in the community with Mosaic in being able to support families.”

Wes May, Springdale Ozone Director “I’m super excited about club curriculum, where we will be going through the entire story of the Bible in a year with ‘The Story’. Students will be getting a chance to learn more about God’s story  and the story He’s written in their own lives!”

Ricky Shade, Fayetteville Ozone Director, “I'm really excited about cool and awesome Ozone special events like our kickoff event Paint Wars, our all-city lip sync event in the fall Great Pretenders, and for the Spring Break Retreats. Ozone special events give students the opportunity to connect with their friends they met at Camp War Eagle that they don't get to see every week. This allows for those camp friendships to continue well into the year for those students from different cities. Our special events also draw in counselors from far away colleges like Kansas State University and Oklahoma State University, which makes it awesome for campers and counselors to be reunited while in a fun and exciting environment. Special Events rock! Wait.... Ozone rocks!”

LEAD Leadership Development Activity

Our LEAD program has been working with high achieving juniors and seniors involved in CWE365 this summer, training students in advanced life skills like finances, personal testimony, and community service. The program is more rigorous and rewarding than other CWE365 programming because it requires consistent participation and completion of homework assignments. The fifth week of our program, however, was a rewarding break from the intensive training of most LEAD activities. 

Working with Paradigm Shift’s founder, Ryan Eller (ryaneller.com), the LEAD students, along with the Youth Strategies Job Readiness Program students, participated in a morning of leadership games and activities. Through engaging team exercises Eller specializes in training students and professionals to set goals, work as a unit, solve problems and lead with service in mind. With a commanding and creative personality, he led our students through a maze of constant instruction, lateral thinking and competitions.

LEAD is often a period of disciplined growth for our most mature students – a time to create budgets, to reflect and write about life experiences, or to build a plan a solid spiritual life in college, away from programs like CWE365. However, Eller brought an energy and dynamic to the group that echoed our summer camp itself – a place of laughter, sprinting, holding hands in a group and obeying bizarre instruction.

Students competed in a rock-paper-scissors tournament. They learned the five types of high-fives. Working in pairs, they built towers of blocks, alternately defending it and attacking others. They perfected animal noises, picked the color of their personality and thumb wrestled.

 

Silly games are often a gateway to more serious material. At CWE365, we’ve found that these activities often free up personalities and break down social barriers, closely knitting groups together. Eller eventually turned his energy and focus towards a discussion of the essential qualities of leadership and a time of reflection on our personal strengths and weaknesses as a leader.

Our LEAD students exited Eller’s seminar, not only with joy and a big grin but also with a better understanding of who they are as a leader of peers – how they can improve not only their shortcomings but also their strong aspects of character. Later, eating lunch with the LEAD students, each was able to articulate the value of not only introspection but also giddy fun.

To see more photos from the morning, click here.

CWE365 LEAD Students take part in Antioch

From June 25-27, eight members of CWE365’s LEAD program attended the Antioch program at Fellowship Bible Church in Lowell. Fellowship’s Antioch program teaches high school students about discipleship, the guiding by example of how Christians should live.

The lectures and activities were focused on Christian missions, the history of how Christianity has spread throughout the world and how to apply the past to the future. It was enlightening for the students to hear how their own lives have been affected by the lives of those in Christian history, “They went so far back to explain where missions originated and the people who were dedicated to doing that. So while I didn’t really like history in school, learning about that it was really cool… it takes a lot of dedication to get into that. I really admired all the people who we learned about. Its something I’m going to look more into learning about, and how to send people [to be missionaries]. It spoke to me and inspired me,” Abraham of Bentonville shared.

Pauline of Springdale shared a similar sentiment, “Having the teacher talk about the history and share with us how the missionaries spread the Gospel… you never really think about how the Gospel got to us, but realizing what they went through, all the pain and suffering and sacrificing they had to do to spread the gospel, and without them we never would have gotten the good news of Jesus. Realizing what they did and knowing there’s still people who haven’t received the gospel, we can be like them and maybe one day people will be talking about us being the radical missionaries!”

The nine students and four Ozone directors were refreshed through perspectives shared bye Fellowship Church staff. One of the reoccurring themes mentioned was the difference between purpose and passion. While passion may be intense at first, it’s easy for it to burn out quickly, an instructor shared. However, when a person understands his purpose for being and living, passion will follow and both will be stronger. Brett of West Fork reflected on the statement, “Our purpose is to be a disciple and make disciples, spreading the word of God. If you don’t have that in your mind, it makes you burn out and your passion is going to be very temporary. Your passion will follow your purpose if you keep purpose in mind.”

LEAD’s time with Antioch built a firm foundation for students as they enter new and unknown territories in the fall. With the majority of them heading off to college, this was a wonderfully purposeful opportunity for growth in the knowledge of how to be a light for Christ on their campus.