My name is Garrett Turner. I was born in Boston, MA. When I was growing up I didn’t go to church until I was in Elementary School. In Middle School, my friend invited me to go to his Church’s youth group, it sounded fun, and he was pretty cool, so I went. His pastor was the funnest person I have ever met, if we wanted to do something he would make it happen.
Then when I started going to High School, I met a teacher who was the coolest person in the world! My brother had him as a French teacher, so I kind of knew him. My brother also knew him through Young Life. I wanted to have a great summer at camp, and so I went that summer to Lake Champion, one of many Young Life camps. It was truly a life changing week. However, once I came home, I fell back into my normal routine. Everything that I had learned, seemed to disapear. Leaving me in the same situations that I had been in before. That next summer I went to Ghana, West Africa.
This mission trip was so powerful, I saw what little they had, and realized how much I really have, and that I shouldnt take anything for granted. It was also amazing to see how great there faith was, with so little, they seemed to trust God a lot more than most people do. However, like camp, when I came home I forgot everything I had learned.
I went to camp again, and it was the same speaker as before, and I thought wow, God must really want me to learn all this, so I paid closer attention, and I turned my eyes upon God rather than myself and my silly struggles, and watched him work through me. This time everything I had re-learned, stuck with me. This changed me so much that I decided to offer a month out of my next summer to do work for God, at that Young Life camp.
When I arrived at the camp, and got my bed and everything all set up, I met forty new people from all over the U.S. However, once I got to know these people, and share stories about camp, I realized that most of them had been at the camps I went to, when I was there. All of them were very nice, and very encouraging. By the end of the month, we were all so sad, that we were leaving, and so we started planning a reunion so that we could see each other. I remember one night, in the guys cabins, we all started sharing our testimonies, they were so revealing about each other and that truly drew us closer together.
This is pretty much how God has worked in me through my life, through last summer.
