Hispanic Super Summer 2008
By Eva Wilson
July 2008
As campers crowded the altar during the response time one evening at Hispanic Super Summer, a sponsor said, “They just want to give it all [to Jesus].”
Hispanic Super Summer marked its fifth year in 2008. This year’s camp was held June 23-27 and kicked off the KNCSB summer youth camps. In past years, the Hispanic event was held in August after the first six weeks of Super Summer.
Slightly more than 100 people participated. The group included 17 people from Holdenville, Okla., about 85 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. Attendance has almost doubled since Hispanic Super Summer began.
Benjamin Piña was the camp spiritual leader this year. He is a friend of Abraham and Ester Arevalo, who lead the Hispanic congregation at South City Southern Baptist Church, Wichita, Kan. Piña and the Arevalos were classmates at Rio Grande Bible Institute in Edinburg in the early 1990’s.
Hispanic Super Summer featured strong challenges to campers about purity.
Dale Taylor of Norfolk, Neb., led morning classes on purity issues. He grew up as a missionary kid in Brazil and then served for nearly 20 years with New Tribes Mission in Mexico.
Basing his remarks on “Why Wait” materials, Taylor said teens have “myopic vision” and only see the present.
“Whatever you do today is going to affect your future.”
An older teen in the crowd told how his decisions while he was younger are now impacting his life.
“I started being sexually active at age 14.” He and his girlfriend were together for three years and had a child.
“I love my daughter more than anything,” he said. But he emphasized the heartache of having to share custody.
Taylor told campers, “God will redeem our mistakes ... but there’s a price to pay.”
He then put his arm around the young man and prayed for his situation.
Hispanic youth face a multitude of challenges, Ester Arevalo said in a low voice as she watched the campers kneeling at the altar.
“They see their parents work so hard. Their future is uncertain. Maybe their parents aren’t that close to God, and they worry about them.”
In addition, these young people face the challenge of living in two cultures—“one culture at home and another at school,” Arevalo said.
She asked Kansas-Nebraska Southern Baptists to pray for God to work in the families of the youth who attended Hispanic Super Summer. Please also pray for church leaders as they try to help the youth live the commitments they made at camp.
“The commitment a young person makes at Super Summer takes them through the year,” she said.
In 2009, Hispanic Super Summer will once again kick off the KNCSB summer youth camps at WCC. It will be held June 22-26.
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