Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Connect

Angela Boothby Frauenfelder

01 Know Him, Show Him

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2021 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Dear Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for this beautiful day.

You know how much I love rain and all the beautiful reminders it sends me that you love me and that you long to shower blessings upon me.

And Lord, you long to shower blessings upon all of us.

I ask that you be with everyone in this room.

Lord, they come hungry, longing to connect with you in a more deep and meaningful way.

And I ask, Lord, that they leave filled and overflowing, just like a cup out in the rain, and that they spill over to others here at Camp Meany.

We love you and we give you this hour in your name, amen.

So my name is Angela Vuffi and I was raised right here in Michigan.

I was raised 2 hours south of here in Goebbels, Michigan on a little farm.

And I am a teacher's daughter and a farmer's daughter.

And I never thought I wanted to be a teacher, but God knew that he wanted me to be a teacher.

I taught kindergarten, first, and second for 3 years.

Taught this fantastic lady's son for 1 year.

And so, yeah, I taught in Holland for 3 years, kindergarten, first, and second.

During that time, I got my master's in outdoor education from Southern Adventist University and that gave me an incredible paradigm shift on how I viewed teaching, number 1, but number 2, how I honestly wanted to practice my Adventism and my Christianity.

So I don't know about you guys, but when's the last time you heard a preacher get up front and preach about taking care of the earth or being more green?

And if you look, I don't know how I missed it until I got my master's.

Like I am so thankful for my journey and the different schools I've been to.

But in Genesis right there, what are the commands that were the first command that God gives to Adam?

What was 1 of the first commands that God gives, or 1 of the first blessings that God gives to Adam?

He told him, yeah, that we're caretakers, that we have dominion over the earth, right?

Well we currently still have dominion over the earth and we are currently caretakers.

And I very strongly believe Jesus is coming soon and I very strongly believe that we should be preparing.

But what if we are modeling a life that shows that we take care and value the gift that God gave us?

Because when I taught K through 2, every Friday in the afternoon we had this thing called Sabbath celebration.

And what I would do, I know every teacher does Sabbath celebration slightly different, but the way I would do it is I wanted to give my kiddos tons of ideas of how to do things connecting with Jesus on the Sabbath, Because often for kids raised as Adventists, Sabbath is boring and their parents take naps or no foot down for people who take naps.

But Sabbath isn't always the most exciting day for kiddos.

So for me, Sabbath celebration was a time to inspire them with all sorts of ideas for how to connect with God.

And every time we started the Sabbath celebration, I told them, I pretended that the earth was a present and that we were opening this gift to go outside and see what presents God has in store for us.

So keep that in your mindset as adults that the earth is a present from God.

And every time you go out there, there's something he wants to connect with you and show you.

So for those of you who have your handout, there are 2, well there are so many beautiful quotes, actually I don't even know where to start.

But if you look on the very back page, there are 2 quotes for why I am so strong proponent of going outside.

And the first 1 is, as we come close to the heart of nature, Christ makes his presence real to us and speaks to our hearts of his peace and love.

So in this crazy world, especially with COVID and economic and all sorts of political crisis, what we need is God telling us that he loves us and that he longs to give us his peace, right?

And if we are filled with that, then imagine what our families are gonna feel like.

Imagine what our classrooms are gonna feel like.

Our churches, if we ourselves are reflecting God's peace and love to others, right?

So in every line of useful labor, in every association of life, he desires us to find a lesson of divine truth.

Then our daily toil will no longer absorb our attention and lead us to forget God.

It will continually remind us of our creator and redeemer.

The thought of God will run like a thread of gold through our homely cares and occupations.

For us, the glory of his face will again rest upon the face of nature.

We shall ever be learning new lessons of heavenly truth and growing into the image of his purity.

Thus, we shall be taught of the Lord and in the lot wherein we are called, we shall abide with God.

I loved very much the truth all my life, but somehow I just never understood completely how to connect with God in nature.

Like I remember hearing, you know, God shows us his love through nature.

I remember hearing a couple of object lessons, but for some reason it just never connected with me in my brain that literally I could think of him constantly when I go outside.

When Jesus taught, what did he always use pretty much 99.9% of the time?

What did he constantly use when he was teaching parables or when he was teaching anything when he was here for 3 and a half years?

Lessons from nature and things that people saw all the time.

And I'm not in any way trying to knock our pastors or any of our sermons, but how many of you guys are able to constantly think of your sermon that you heard on Sabbath throughout the week because you keep seeing visual reminders of it?

It's just not the way we teach or preach anymore, right?

But if you look at Jesus, they saw shepherds, they saw farmers, they saw vineyards, they saw wineskins, you name it, right?

Those different lessons, he constantly wanted them to be reminded.

And if you look at this quote in Christ's object lesson, if you're folding the laundry, if you're going for a drive to go get groceries, Jesus, if it says, so in every line of useful labor and every association of life, he desires to find a lesson of divine truth.

Okay, so think of all the things you do on a daily basis and are you able to think of God and abide with him all day long?

But then, God is so good and he helped me to understand more how to do it.

So I'm gonna start with something that you see everyday.

Well, you know what, maybe not everyday, but almost everyday, when you look up in the sky, what do you see?

So when you look up, and I wrote a little article, you don't need to read it now, I'm gonna go over it with you guys, and I just wrote up something that way.

Often we hear so much at camp meeting that we forget.

So this way you guys can go back and read it, but I'm just gonna summarize it, because I wanna go through a couple, and then I want to have some time to do some other things.

So when I see anything in nature that I want to capture, so I'd say this with the youth.

You know how they use Instagram, and they capture things with a photo?

And so I say, I want you to capture a moment with God, with a promise, right?

So let's say it's a gorgeous sunset, or a gorgeous sunrise, or a tree that's just extraordinarily beautiful with bright fall colors.

And you just wish you could just capture that moment, you know, when you're like, wow, God, you're amazing.

Or the clouds, 1 of my favorite things is when the clouds, it looks like rays are coming out of the clouds.

And for that, I just totally think that is how it's gonna look when Jesus comes, but much grander.

But every time I see those streams of light, I just think, man, he wants me to connect with him, and he wants to pour his wisdom on me and his leading.

Satan's favorite secret, not secret, Satan's favorite tactic is that God is too confusing to connect with.

And our youth are lost and so confused because they just don't know how to connect with him.

We've made spirituality just a head thing.

You sit in church and you contemplate about it.

You sit in Sabbath school and you think about it.

Church and God is things you have to figure out in your head.

And if you look at the way Jesus taught, and you look at the way God worked with the Israelites, it was a whole tactile, kinesthetic experience, right?

They smelled the incense, they tasted, They heard the trumpet, right, and the call for prayers.

They saw and they touched the sheep, right?

It was all those 5 senses totally being engaged all the time.

And there's so many quotes with Ellen White that she talks about using those 5 senses as Jesus as he sat, for example, on the Sermon on the Mount.

And he says, you could feel the breeze blowing against you as you listened to him talk and heard the birds singing and smell.

And they talk about all the senses, but we've made spirituality just a head thing.

02 Disconnect to Connect

Dear Jesus Lord, I thank you so much for a beautiful day.

I think it's nice because at Camp Meany I just get so hot day after day and it drains the energy and cool weather just energizes us.

So I thank you so much for just a chance to enjoy a little bit of difference in nature.

And Lord, I ask for your spirit to be very present.

Lord, there is a message that each person needs to hear that they're hungry for, and I ask that this encourage them and strengthen them wherever they are in their walk.

So there's all sorts of facts in here for children and adults, but my focus is usually children because I'm a teacher, but this applies to anybody.

All right, so we'll start with a wonderful quote.

Jesus' education was gained from heaven-appointed sources, from useful work, from the study of the scriptures, from nature and from the experiences of life.

God's lesson books, full of instruction to all who bring to them the willing hand the seeing eye and the understanding heart his intimate acquaintance with the scriptures shows how diligently his early years were given to the study of God's Word and spread out before him was the great library of God's created works he who made all things study the lessons which his own hand had written in earth and sea and sky apart from the unholy ways of the world he gathered stores of scientific knowledge from nature he studied the life of plants and animals And you know that's the principle of nature.

The trees take our bad breath, our carbon dioxide, and they turn that into oxygen for us, right?

So everything in nature, the rivers, all the springs go into them, and then they go out and water the earth, right?

For this, he found reasons and resources in nature, new ideas of ways and means flashed into his mind as he studied plant life and animal life.

And so if nothing else, why should we get outside?

We should get outside to watch the way that God wants us to relate to others, how we should be making connections to others is a big reason to go outside.

All right, so 1 of my favorite authors that I had to study for my master's was a man by the name of Richard Louv.

The Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle, and then the other 1 is called Vitamin N, where he just gives us tons of ideas how to get outside.

And so these books have all sorts of research, tons and tons of studies.

The bibliography is crazy long in the back because there's all sorts of different studies that I'm going to present to you today.

But he coined a term called the nature deficit disorder.

Okay, so you guys all have the nature deficit disorder.

It basically describes the human cost of alienation from nature.

And so do you guys have diminished use of the senses?

Do you smell, you think, as good as you could?

When I ran outdoor ed and I ran outdoor ed for Cabo Sable, but then also Segola does it and up in the UP.

And a lot of times these kids spend way more time outside in the UP.

And literally we're walking through a nature walk that I'm taking the Yupra kids on, where I feel like they're teaching me more than I'm teaching them, and this 1 boy stops, and he's like, do you smell that?

And he just knew it by the smell of the bird.

And I was like, wow, yep, all right, I have nature deficit disorder, because I don't smell different birds and things.

Attention difficulties, they say now the average person's attention span is 8 seconds, right?

And a goldfish is 9 seconds, or did I say that backwards?

I think a goldfish is 8 seconds, and our attention span is 9 seconds.

So we're doing fantastic, as you can see.

Fran and I will sit there and stuff, and we'll be moving, because we like to be outside.

So, you know, there's a time and a place, but honestly, a lot of us have attention difficulties because we're used to screens changing all the time.

Also, there's higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.

And if there's a problem right now in our world, if we could just boil it down to 1, you would definitely say emotional illness.

The emotional issues going on in our world are so prevalent and our teens are rocked with them.

Working here, working with teens the last 4 to 5 years has been intense.

This disorder can be detected in individuals, families, and communities.

So like the whole family is affected, the whole community is affected.

All right, by weighing the consequences of the disorder, we also can become more aware of how blessed our children and ourselves can be biologically, cognitively, and spiritually through positive physical connection to nature.

So have you had your dose of vitamin N today?

Did you have your dose of vitamin N yesterday?

We're good about vitamin C, you know, with this whole COVID thing, they're like, take vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc.

Well, there was a specific couple of years that it really heightened.

1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children 9-12, who spent time in such outside activities as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening.

So if you think about somebody who's in their 50s or 60s, they probably had, even if they lived in a town, they had the old lot that they played baseball on, or they played in the streets.

Or they would play if they lived in the farms, they were outside.

But if you ask kids now how many play outside, it's very, very, very small.

Because the TVs, the iPads, the phones, right?

And so just kids aren't exploring and playing outside anymore.

Another study showed that children's free play and discretionary time in a typical week declined a total of 9 hours in a 25 year period.

We go around and kids are just put in containers because it's easier, they're put in car seats.

Not that those are bad, but back in the day there were no car seats, there's strollers.

And I'm sure you've seen it now too where they have leashes, right?

Where they have those cute little monkey backpacks and now the kid's on a leash because it's easier for the parent.

Okay, well then, containerized kids have been around for a long time, right?

Another thing that I think is really disgusting, if I may say so, is now they put a little spot in car seats, and in those baby things that they play with the little toys, they now have a spot in there for mom's iPhone.

So the baby can just look up, instead of play with the little things, now it's the iPhone, and also in the car seat, it's a spot for the iPhone.

So do you think they're trying to get a captive audience?

When small children go outside, they're often found in containers because it's easier if I can get my jogging in or walking if I just keep my baby in the containers.

A whole lot harder for me to be patient and walk around with him because I don't get my steps in, right?

They did a study in Scotland for three-year-olds and they found that they were active 20 minutes a day.

They put these little wrist washes in Scotland, they did a study on them, and they found that these three-year-olds were active for 20 minutes a day.

03 Connection Through Community

Father in heaven, we just thank you for the wonderful message that we can head outside and get to connect and experience you in a personal way.

And that's 1 of the most amazing gifts you've given us is that we can share that gift with others.

We're just come through COVID and that ability to actually be in person is like such a gift.

As we crack into today's session and the information we're looking at and then also actually just trying to get outside.

May we get to see you deeper, may we get to know each other more deeply as well and walk away with some tools to equip us when we head home as well.

The coolest thing for me about the idea of connection and community is the Bible actually talks a little bit about it.

Yeah, works for some, doesn't work for others but I actually remember a verse from doing that.

So in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 24 and 25, we're gonna jump there, And it says, let us consider 1 another to provoke unto love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a matter of some ease, but exhorting 1 another and so much more as you see the day approaching.

And the Bible tells me that I need to actually go and hang out with people.

It's reminding us to actually spend time with each other.

For those who have been here in our previous sessions, 1 of the verses that we shared, I think it was Monday, was in 1 John.

We used it the other day to, because it has a lot of tangible hands on stuff.

It says, that which was from the beginning which we have heard and we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life for the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifest unto us.

So that was kind of what we looked at the other day.

It's a tangible experience that we can have with Jesus.

The next verse in verse 3 says, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.

And the reason we declare it unto you, that You may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

And we write these things unto you that your joy may be full.

And that's kind of the point of why we're trying to run these sessions.

Because when we're able to have those tangible experiences with God, the ability to have that fellowship with the Father and the Son is so much more easy.

And the awesome thing here too is that you may also have fellowship with us.

And I think that's why today's is about community.

When we get to have those experiences with other people, it cements something.

Like think of the friends in your life that you already have.

Because most often we have a common interest with them or we've had shared experiences with them.

Like the friends when you grew up in school, well you had to sit in school together so you became friends with them.

Once you get older it's usually more on your interests and hobbies.

So when we get to share those experiences, particularly if they're outside experiences, that bonding is so much stronger.

So that's why we re-shared those verses today, because it's just an awesome set of verses.

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and in fellowship and in the breaking of bread and prayers.

I like this 1, particularly because it talks about fellowship and breaking of bread.

Has anyone noticed when you sit down and eat with people, like it's just so much easier to connect.

We were at grad weekend here at GLA, because Andrew was teaching here.

There was all the families here, and we sat down for lunch with the parents of 1 of the kids who goes here, because his mom was from Australia, I'm Australian, and then previously to that, we kind of figured out that I knew her nephew, loosely, from back in Australia.

So, like, there was a connection point to start with, but we sat down with them for lunch at about 5.30, 06:00 that evening, where like, we said we were gonna go to the kids, I don't know whether open, I guess open house.

And yeah, that was probably a couple hours ago, we better go.

So it's amazing how when you sit down for a meal, how easy that connection can continue.

And we actually wound up running into them again a day or 2 later up at Sleeping Bear Dunes.

So the beauty of sitting down for a meal is amazing in connection.

So I just wanted to start off with the Bible as we get into this.

For those who were here yesterday, it's awesome.

We live in a scientific age and it's really cool how science actually backs up so much of what scripture says.

So, based on that, I think we should probably have a little bit of science as well.

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Connect

03 Connection Through Community

Transcript

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