Uruguay National Gathering 2017
by David Sundeep
It's an instinctive feeling of happiness when you see open water and an absolute pleasure when you get a chance to dive into it and of course it's superlatively fun if we have friends around. Those are the moments where we relived our childhood without any hesitation and such occassions happen so often in every summer with Christian Surfers Uruguay (CSU).
Uruguay, which is in the Southern Hemisphere, has its summer from Dec-Feb and is the time where many pop out of their houses and walk to the beach. There are many occasions where the Bible talks about healings happening around water. We as a group wanted to make ourselves available at these places where souls needed healing. So, we keep ourselves motivated and encouraged by the word of God.
Every year we have a custom to finish the year with a CSU camp outside the city and this year we have chosen to spend our surf camp for two days in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Punta del Este is to the east of the capital city Montevideo and is the place where we have decent waves to surf. Surf experts in the group were tracking and sending the wind / wave / weather forecast of the sea through WhatsApp which is Greek to the rookies in the group (here I am a rookie writing this article). However, everyone was excited to unzip there surf boards, zip-up wetsuits and get ready to go.
Day 1: Our CSU director Franco went early Friday morning to keep everything ready in the camping house and he sent a photo cleaning the swimming pool. Everyone wanted the weekend to start immediately. By the end of Friday evening everyone had reached the camp house in Punta del Este. We were happy to see some new faces in our camp. Franco and Etel's new-born baby boy, who is just 4 months old, was busy meeting new friends. It was a beautiful and cold night where we had "parrilla" (grilled barbecue), pizza, coke and nice conversation. We prayed and everyone slipped into their dorms to get some rest.
Day 2: Early Saturday morning, all men are up by 6 AM. The weather looks cloudy with a chilly breeze. We had a lite breakfast and headed to the coast with our surf equipment in search of finding good waves. After analyzing few spots our experts found a swell and decided this would be an apt place for rookies. Lars shared the devotion (word of God) about Solomon and how we should know God's perception and what / how to ask God according to His purpose. We prayed, waxed the boards, zipped the wetsuits and hit the water. Oh man! The water is freezing. It drizzled a bit while we surfed. We had a good time of fellowship while surfing, we usually surf in the same spot as a group. Altogether we surfed for 2 hours and headed back to our camp house.
Until evening we shared good conversations and friendship and then decided to hit the waves again. A few enjoyed surfing, while others rested and took photos around. After the sunset and before dinner, we had devotion led by our guest speaker Coco Hernández (Vida Uruguay) and finally we arranged our beds to take deep sleep. We could hear snoring from each dorm, God, thankyou for your presence all through this exhaustive day.
Day 3: Its cold. Wakeup-breakfast-setup the surfboards. It's even cold than the previous day! We enjoyed our morning surf session and our families visited while we were still surfing. We are done with our surfing in the camp. We returned to the camp house and after a while had fellowship and fun time with the kids around the pool as they flapped their hands over the surfboard. Finally we cleaned up the house and arranged everything as it was given to us. We had fun for all these three days and its time to wish "saludos y adios" to every one. We setup our surfboards and stacked all our belongings and bit of sand in our cars and drove to our cities.
All praise to God for His wonderful plan of bringing us together and experiencing His presence and Love.