Schoolies

I just got back from volunteering at a festival, here in South Australia, called "Schoolies". Schoolies is a 3 day long festival for graduating high school seniors, from all over the state, to come and celebrate their achievement.
The uniqueness about this festival is that it is pretty much run by volunteers, and even cooler than that is that all of the volunteers are Christians. Churches from all over come together to put on this festival for the kids and together the volunteers make up, what is known as, "Green Team".
Schoolies has kind of a reputation; the only thing that we in America have that comes close to Schoolies is college student's spring break. Students come and they party; not all kids are there for the same reasons but most are there to party and party hard. Green Team's job is to provide a safe and positive environment so that these guys can celebrate this great achievement in their lives.
Schoolies (the students) know that Green Teamer's are Christians; what they don't know is why we do it. I was shocked at how many times I was asked, just within the first hour, why I joined Green Team. Everything for you to evangelize is already set up for you; it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

I must admit that I was not looking forward to Schoolies at all. When it was being described to me, I heard one thing and that was that I would lose a lot of sleep. This did not sit well with me because in Psalm 127 it says that the Lord gives to His beloved rest, and I have made it my life to live by the Word; so the thought that something might come in between my ability to engage in the fulness of God's biblical promises bothered me. However, when I arrived and saw what Schoolies was about and I engaged in the ministry (whether it be riding to and from with them on the busses, picking up trash, doing crowd control or getting them excited) I was all for it! As a team we saw some really awesome things; people came to the Lord, people were touched, encouraged and moved. Personally, I'm still trying to figure out why those kids were so intent to try and make out while in a mosh pit but I know that the Lord used my presence; whether I have evidence or stories to prove that is, for me, irrelevant. If nothing else, I can say that every single one of those kids walked away with a very different perspective on Christians because there they were in their worst moments, drunk, upset, lost and out of their minds, and no one was judging them; all they received were helping hands, loving hearts and smiling faces from people that genuinely cared.