Students Grow in Faith at Super Summer

June 17, 2019 Grace Mitchell, Staff Writer

(ABILENE, Texas)–Over 500 students and leaders gathered on the Hardin-Simmons campus this week for worship, recreation, and evangelism training. Students entering 8th grade through students entering their first year of college were separated into color schools made up of their age group. HSU is one of five Texas Baptist universities to host Super Summer and the only site to host two sessions.

Two members of the HSU “BE” Team

The HSU Build and Encourage (BE) Team helped welcome students and ran the Texas Olympics and Wild and Crazy Games. Davey Downey ’20 is a biblical studies major at HSU and a member of HSU’s Summer Rec Staff. He sees leading recreation at Super Summer as more than a job, but a way to impact youth.

“When I went to my color school time, my group was cheering for me a lot. I told them they shouldn’t be cheering for me, but for their leaders who aren’t being paid and for God.”

Downey says his favorite part of Super Summer is seeing the energy and excitement campers have to worship God.

This graph shows how the students’ time is broken up to emphasize learning and growing in their faith

The mission of Super Summer is to help students know and share the gospel. Students gathered in whole-group settings for Rainbow Celebration worship service. They also separated into color schools for age-specific teaching and broke up into smaller family groups for discussion. While Super Summer is a camp with recreation and other fun activities, their main focus is on teaching and discipleship.

This year’s theme was “Made Alive.” The week’s speaker was Matt Thigpen, young adults pastor of First Baptist Richardson, and the worship leader was Angie Eddy.

“We are expectant for God to awaken your heart and give you holy passion to share the gospel,” said Thigpen in the opening Cloudburst ceremony.

Mackenzie Percivill is an incoming senior from Fairview Baptist Church in Mineral Wells.

“I’ve been learning more about my faith and opening my heart to Jesus,” she said. “I want to share the word of God with others.”

Morgan Parker from PaulAnn Church in San Angelo experienced Super Summer for the first time this year.

“I learn something new from every worship time,” she said. “We learned that 3 million people have never heard the name ‘Jesus.’”

Parker was encouraged to learn to know and share the gospel to make an impact on those who don’t know Jesus.

Ryan Bailey is an incoming 8th grader also from Fairview BC.

“My favorite part has definitely been worship,” she said. “It’s really cool to see how it changes your attitude. I’ve been learning how God has an everlasting love. Our life is like a mission trip trying to build other Christians up instead of tearing them down.”

Super Summer partners with iGo Global to send students on short-term mission trips to practice what they learn at camp. The first trip will be to Honduras July 18-27, 2020 and the second will be to Japan July 18-27, 2020.

HSU will host the sixth Super Summer session July 8-12. Super Summer is one of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Youth programs. For more information, visit supersummer.com.

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