NEWS
New Times
9
1102 ks to attend SAYCO
Photo: Aaron
Vinall
Some of the young people who attended this year’s South Australian Youth Camp Out (SAYCO), at Mount Barker’s Cornerstone College travelled more than a 1,100 kilometres to reach the event. David Wright, a community minister with the Mobile Aboriginal Patrol, brought a bus load of young people from Oodnadatta to attend the annual camp for 12 to 15 year olds. Highlights of the event included music from the Queensland born, USbased, Christian Band ‘Alabaster Box’, the carnival and xtreme games. Tea Tree Gully Youth Ministry coordinator Martyn Smith was the keynote speaker. This year the young delegates composed their own songs, dramas and movies around the theme ‘Dream dreams’. More than 400 young people attended the event from October 4 to 6.
Training ambassadors for peace Marjorie Lewis-Jones It’s monsoon season in India and deep in ‘the abode of the clouds’ 37 Christians and one Hindu are learning how to prepare for battle in the fight for peace. Far away in the same country more than one million people have been trapped by floodwaters due to a river that changed course in Bihar; Hindu violence against Christians in Orissa has been escalating; and protests in favour of self-determination in Jammu and Kashmir have resulted in violent clashes.
These young people pledged to be peacemakers at a Young Ambassadors for Peace workshop in August organised by Uniting International Mission and the Presbyterian Church of India. Photo: Marjorie Lewis-Jones.
But it’s a peaceful outpost here for these 38 young trainees among the banana trees. They come with eager, shining faces, limbs flexed and notebooks poised.
Much of this first day they spend laughing and cheering, playing games, dashing about and even dancing. Their Philippines-born Australian leader Joy Balazo adopts a playful attitude; she’s beaming a broad smile and laughing a lot too. Joy works for the Uniting Church in Australia’s Young Ambassador for Peace (YAP) program. She and the Presbyterian Church of India (PCI) are responsible for organising this peace-building workshop in Umran. Joy starts the program with fun and games because the skills she’s teaching are best learnt with sponge-like openness awakened through child-like delight.
People in Mission placements for 2009 are now available Visit http://www.uim.uca. org.au/peopleinmission/ placement_opportunities for a full list of over 60 placement opportunities
Continued on page 14 NOVEMBER 2008 UIM PIM A1.indd 1
3/10/08 11:32:50 AM