Manjit Kaur Testimonial 6 Sikh Student Camp 2003

I have been born And brought up in West London. My family are of punjabi background, and the punjabicultural influece was strong in my life growing up.

I first attended Sikh Student Camp in 2003, which was an amazing experience for me, to the point that the following year I offered to help out as a sevadar.

The strongest memory i have of camp was being approached by sevadars to do sehaj path seva. This was a very special experience for me because I had never got my head around the concept that I could do something like that. I thought only special people could do something like that, and plus I couldn't read gurbani anyway, i had never had the opportunity to learn and had never needed to learn so had never made any efforts towards that direction. 'why ask for directions for a road you have no plans to travel on?'

However, at camp I was approached by sevadars to take part in reading. 'I can't read'..
'its ok you can read in english'. All of a sudden the inaccessable was accessable. So I
read in English. It was nice to read. But something was missing. The missing part was that I should have been reading the Gurmukhi. The camp was the push i needed to learn the language. Next time I wanted to be able to read in Gurmukhi, because now I was 'allowed' to read, so I wanted to do it properly. A door was opened. I had been lifted by the non-judgemental approach. I too was someone special, and special people had seen that and through their sight had allowed me to see it. For that I shall always be grateful for the gift that was given to me at camp. It was ok for me to be me because I was special. That was the first step towards my relationship with Guru Ji. As with all special relationships, that relationship grew. I learnt to read in Gurmukhi and then had the opportunity to take daily hukamnamas which totally changed my life. To the point that I could no longer go on without amrit which I was blessed with a year later.

I want to be able to give back what was given to me. Being a sevadar of Sikh Student
Camp is just a small way of being able to do that. As a sevadar of sikh student camp i
have been blessed to hear the amazing stories and experiences of past campers. I wish
everyone could hear what i have heard and experienced from listening to the campers who have gone through the experience of camp.

My name is Manjit Kaur. I am 31 years old. I am a secondary school maths teacher in a West London school working with young people from the age of 11 to 16.