Camp meetings are a great way to meet up with friends and meet some great speakers. I used to be more socially withdrawn for much of my life up to the year 2017 and didn't think much about it. I believe Steve Wohlberg was a speaker at PA camp meeting in 2017 and I heard that he was dealing with some kind of mental crisis. Ironically, I started going through one myself that year too, so I found that really relatable. Here is a list of speakers I met at camp meetings so far: Doug Batchelor (2018), Mark Finley (2019), John Bradshaw (2019), and David Asscherick (2022).
Many of the friends I meet up at camp meetings are ones I met at a church at some point in time. I have a friend named Joshua Fleming who's originally from New Jersey, lived in Pennsylvania for a while, moved to West Virginia to go to medical school, and now is doing his residency over in Texas. I met him in 2017 at my church, we connected on Facebook and he helped me through my crisis with encouraging words from the bible and Spirit of Prophecy. I got to meet him again in 2018 and 2019 during camp meeting.
Funny story that happened in the 2019 camp meeting: I was on my way to the car of my friend who brought me and then the alarm of the car next to it suddenly goes off. Next, I kid you not, John Bradshaw comes to that car and turns off the alarm. So apparently he had parked right next to my friend's car. What is the chance of that? haha
There was no camp meeting in 2020 due to the pandemic, but I did get to meet many new Adventist friends online though. See my other post about how the pandemic became a blessing. In 2021, I didn't really think to meet up with any speakers, but I did get to meet up with the Adventist graphic designer, Andrew Carroll. Andrew is also involved with an online ministry that I'm also involved with. I got a new pastor that year, but I got to meet up with my previous pastor (Tom J Stone) at camp meeting too. This pastor was also a great help for me too during my crisis.
I got to meet up with my previous pastor again during this year's camp meeting. I also met up with Andrew Carroll, Lee Givan (musician), Jason Miller (from Hope Sabbath School) and the guest speaker David Asscherick. I've met Lee G before, he did a concert at my church. My friendship with Jason started with a Facebook conversation. I didn't know he was at camp meeting and he didn't know I'd be there either, but he found out because of my Instagram stories. He messaged me and we got to meet up for a bit.
As for David Asscherick, the first time I've heard of him was on some cassette tapes my dad bought about 20 years ago. David was the first English speaking Adventist evangelist that I've ever heard of before, so it was really cool to finally meet him.
No comments:
Post a Comment