Christmas 2023

The very merriest Christmas to you, Bethel friends!

Have you ever been presented with a choice that you knew would change and shape your life, though you didn’t quite know how?

Maybe you’ve been given the choice to go to a new school? Or to play a new sport? Get a pet? Or to be kind to someone?

Through this Christmas season I’ve been dwelling on Luke 1:26-38, and have been thinking about choices like that. Big choices that feel a bit scary to make, because we can’t quite comprehend how they will shape our lives.

In Luke 1:26-38 the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive and give birth to Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour and Redeemer of all. At the end of her conversation with the angel, Mary responds “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled”. 

I won’t pretend I really know what it would be like to be Mary, to be a young Palestinian woman, living during Roman rule. Who gave up herself, who had to ask herself the question, “will I let this small baby change the course of my life forever?”. 

But I do know that that is a question I must also ask myself,  “will I let this small baby change the course of my life forever?” – “will I let Jesus be my Immanuel and dwell within all of who I am and be shaped by him, even if I don’t exactly know what that will mean?”. 
I hope that you can take time to genuinely ask yourself that question – and much like Mary, you will choose to let Jesus, our Redeemer, change your life. 

As you go out into your many Christmas festivities and into the new year, I leave you with an excerpt from a prayer that I have prayed often this fall:
may your “heart be surprised by, shaped by, warmed by, remade by, the same joy that forever wells within & radiates from [the heart of God]” – Douglas McKelvey 


Grace, peace & rest to you this Christmas,
– Jaclyn Gurnett,
On behalf of the Bethel Bible Camp Committee. 

Bethel Bible Camp 2024 (DV)

Below are our camp dates for 2024. You will notice there are a few changes in dates, which is to fit all the camps we will host in the summer months. You may also notice our last week this summer is Grade 7-8 (Inter-Jr. high) – we have added one week to be able to accommodate the overflow of Grades 6,7,8 campers who registered last year.

(bolded camps are our main camps – a camper can register in only 1 of the bolded camps, and any other camps which they fit in the category of)**