Things We Learn at Summer Camp

By the time you’ll be reading this, I’ll have (hopefully) survived Summer Church Camp! None of our youth were going to camp at Caney, so I decided to accept an offer to serve as a counselor at Lakeview Church Camp in Texas. It’s a family affair this year. My brother is a youth minister at a large Methodist church in the Houston area, and he is serving as the camp director. He asked Sione and I if we’d like to serve, and bring kids from our churches (or just Johnny & Poni), and after checking w/ERUMC youth about their interests, we decided to take him up on the offer. You may be asking, “Why in the world would anyone do such a thing!?!?!?”
Here’s why… to learn. Don’t you learn things when you hang out with young people? (sometimes, what we learn, we’re not really sure we WANTED to learn! And some things, we wish we HADN’T learned!) I hope to learn more about today’s young people, and “what’s new” with them these days. I hope to learn what other churches are doing in their youth groups and to minister with and to youth and their families. I hope to learn more about my own giftedness where youth are concerned, and I hope to translate all of that into ideas for our ministries at ERUMC.
Now, when I went to Summer Camp the first time, I learned that some people are pushy about trying to get other people “saved”, and that if you pee in the pool, something happens to your bathing suit and everybody knows. I never did really see what they were talking about, but I believed them, so I made sure not to make that mistake! I also learned that I’m an excellent shot with a 22, and a bow, that riding horses at Pappaw’s is more fun than camp, because we can make the horse run at Pappaw’s, and I think scarey stories around the campfire are stupid.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons we learn at Summer Camp, is how much we love and miss our family. My first time away at camp, my big brother was on the other side of the camp with the boys, and I pined for even just a sight of him. I think I wrote my mother and father every single day. I remember crying myself to sleep on my bunk in the “Sunshine Cabin”. Being shy, as I was, perhaps I wasn’t quite ready for camp, but I’m glad I had those experiences. I think Summer Camps helped me grow up and figure out who I really was. I discovered things I liked about myself, and learned things maybe I wanted to change about myself.
What about you? What helped/helps you learn those things about yourself? What kinds of things help us as a church to know what we like and what we maybe want to change about ourselves? Like at camp, we may find out things about ourselves that others don’t really like… and it may be important to us as a church to know what kinds of things we could change.
I’ll let you know what I learned! See you at church!