Young Adult Winter Retreat 2024
Friday, February 2, 2024 - Sunday, February 4, 2024
Age Group: 18+ College & Career
Cost: $200
Winter Camp at Camp AREV is fun filled, spiritually driven weekend camp that helps campers get out of their daily routine and experience the amazing creation while helping them worship their amazing Creator. Our aim is to make sure campers have a safe, fun and spiritually rich experience.
18+ young adults (college & Career)
$200 for the weekend. Includes 2 nights lodging, 5 meals, all activities, shirt
$250 After December 15, 2023
$30 late registration fee will be applied for those who register 7 days prior to the start of each camp weekend.
Campership scholarships are available upon the completion of the application. scholarships are offered baed on financial need.
Recreation
Outdoor fun for everyone! Including– archery, zip lining, basketball, soccer, volleyball, disc golf, ropes course, hiking and more!
Lodging
Our newly renovated cabins mean enjoying the fresh mountain air can be as comfortable as it is exciting!
Worship & Speaker
Every day at camp we gather for energetic and moving times of worship and messages from our session speaker.
Meet Our Speaker
Dr. Ara Astourian Ph.D.
Ara Astourian grew up in a “Christian home” and spent a big chunk of his early years in church. Although some people who have a religious upbringing are turned off by it, Ara loved it. And by the time he got to college, where he began to study philosophy, he thought of himself as a committed Christian. His philosophy classes, rather than causing him to doubt his faith, only made him feel more confident that Jesus was the Son of God and that the message of the New Testament could be trusted.
Surprisingly, though, it was reading the New Testament that shook Ara's faith. In his early 20s, Ara began to meditate on Jesus’ saying, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The more he thought about these words, the more he realized how much being a true Christian would cost him. When Jesus took up his cross, he died, and Ara was starting to realize that Jesus had challenged his followers, in some sense, to do the same. This exposed the weakness of Ara's faith: there were some things he wasn’t willing to give up in his effort to “follow Jesus.” So Ara's faith slowly decreased, to the point that he eventually declared himself an agnostic, someone who didn’t believe in Jesus and wasn’t even sure if God existed.
And yet Ara is scheduled to be your winter camp speaker. Who could have imagined that? He's excited to tell you more at camp!
Ara lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife, Lilit. By day, Ara is a lawyer and works for a law firm in Downtown LA. He has a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a Ph.D. in philosophy (with a focus on political philosophy) from USC, and a B.A. in philosophy from Cal Poly Pomona. He serves as an elder at Armenian Brotherhood Bible Church (ABBC) in Pasadena, where he and Lilit help lead ABBC’s weekly college group, TEAM. Ara loves playing basketball, listening to music/podcasts, reading, and going for walks in his neighborhood. He also spends a lot of time agonizing over the Lakers.
