Press On Missions board President, Rick Collins, traveled to Cuba in February of ‘05 to meet with the youth leadership team of Second Baptist Church of Moa and evaluated their camp experience from the Fall of ‘04. Everyone on the leadership team was very positive on their camp experience and a decision was made to conduct another camp August of ‘05. One of the goals for this camp was to let the Second Baptist leadership team take complete ownership of all aspects of this camp. In ‘04 the Second Baptist Church leadership team had "shadowed" the Press On leadership team. The goal for ‘05 was for the Press On team to shadow the Second Baptist Church leadership team and be on site in case there were questions or problems. Another goal was to expand the camp vision to other youth ministry leaders in the Moa area. In August of ‘05 a team of four current Press On Mission board members returned to Moa, Cuba to conduct a follow-up camp at the Second Baptist Church of Moa. The camp was expanded from 2 color groups to 4 color groups and expanded from 16 to 24 teams. The Second Baptist Church leadership took responsibilities to have a camp director, large group master Bible study leader, recreation director and all other aspects of the camp leadership. On the third night of camp youth leaders of local youth ministries were invited to come and witness what was taking place.

Local youth leaders spent the evening observing and asking questions about what they saw happening. The next day the Press On team met with these local leaders and shared the camp vision and debriefed them on the camp experience they had witnessed. The Press On team fielded their questions and placed "Built 2 Last" camp resources in their hands for them to take back to their churches. It was a very positive experience and the Press On team left feeling like they had accomplished what God had sent them to do. By the third day of camp attendance had peaked at 225 students. Many more students were expected to attend the last day of camp, but a major storm blew in. That evening about 150 students showed up in the pouring rain. The camp director came up to the Press On team leadership and told them the camp was a great success. He said he could say this with confidence because of the number of students who showed up the last night in the rain. He shared with the team that normally in a hard rain storm people would not venture out because they had to walk. The fact that they showed up in the storm proved they loved what they were experiencing. It was later discovered that the storms were the result of the outer bands of hurricane Katrina!

YOUTH CAMP 2005
Moa, Cuba

• Dates of Camp:  August 2005
• 225 Teenagers + leadership
• Our team did a “follow-up” camp to better train the leadership at 2nd Baptist Church of Moa.  We also invited local ministers to come and observe the camp.  We were able to place camp Bible study materials in Spanish into their hands as a resource tool.
• Heavy rain from the outer bands of hurricane Katrina kept us from getting a group photo the last day of camp.