Former Camper Email 2017

This letter is FULL of incredible insights, memories, and connection points from a Campers perspective.  Please enjoy seeing God's providential hand standing by this young man through time.

Email received from former camper. August 2017

My name is Anthony M*******. I am writing this letter to express my gratitude for this ministry.

I grew up in an abusive home and ended up in foster care on a few separate occasions. When I was about 10 years old I was sent to camp from my foster home (probably to give them a break; I was a difficult kid to deal with).

I had never heard about, nor seen in action, the love of Jesus. RFKC was an experience like never before. The foster homes I was in varied in religious beliefs from Catholicism to agnosticism, but when I went to RFKC I experienced, for the first time in my life, the consuming love of Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

 I had the Gospel explained to me in a way that I could actually understand. My birth mom was a Jehovah's witness and I assumed that made me one until I met a group of apologetically strong man of God that explained sound doctrine to me.

I ended up attending camp for a few more years until I reached the cut off age. My final year of camp some of the camp staff committed to discipling me outside of the camp through the proper channels of the Connecticut foster care system (DCF at the time). Over that next year I began regularly attending a Bible teaching church. 

Eventually I moved back home with my birth mom, who was a non practicing Jehovah's witness. We moved around the country on section 8 housing and I was exposed to a lot of other opposing worldviews. I eventually determined I would become an atheist as it was the easiest worldview to adapt to in any environment without any training necessary. I also liked the idea of no eternal consequences for my actions.

Fast forward a couple year I became the statistical foster youth ending up in jail on multiple occasions and homeless on other occasions. I made a family out of the other people who were doing and selling drugs with me and the only time I went to church was to use and manipulate the "dumb religious folks" around me. 

After years of living far outside of the will of God I had an extremely eye opening experience when God allowed me to see in the Spirit, the very real darkness that surrounded my life. In a rock bottom moment I decided to turn to God and I remembered the only God I knew of that I had actually experienced. All of a sudden atheism seemed so foolish to me and I began a journey of rediscovering Jesus. If it wasn't for RFKC, I wouldn't have known where to turn. 

Now I am a father in a fatherless nation, and husband in a time broken families, and a man of God leading my family, church and community into deeper obedience to the great command and great commission and a relationship with a great God. I truly wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart.