Sunday, June 23 -- Special Person's Overnight Camp

Sunday morning was a new experience for the camp, even for the veteran staff members. Because the week started on Saturday for the campers, the whole camp attended church Sunday morning up the hill from camp. The directors gave an overview of what our week was to look like. Then, each group of campers performed the skit of their lesson the previous night and led the congregation in a favorite camp song. After the service, the campers were given the opportunity to socialize with the church members for a bit before heading back down to camp. Personally, I really enjoyed this service. It gave the church an opportunity to see a glimpse of what the camp is like, and I think the campers really enjoyed it as well for the most part. When we arrived back at camp, we took individual, crew, and whole group pictures with all of the campers so that the pictures could be developed on time to give them to each camper by the end of the week. After this, we ate lunch. At mealtimes, we made sure to have 3 staff and 3 campers at every table. The staff would then ask the camper what food he or she wanted and bring back a plate for the camper and him or herself. Some of the campers were on "special diets", which meant that they had food allergies or needed to watch intake of things like sugar, calories, etc. At the end of each meal, the directors would give final instructions about who was on kitchen clean-up duty (or KP) for that particular meal and then we would dismiss with a camp song.

After lunch, the campers had rest time. My co-intern and I had a group for recreation, so we set up for that during rest time. We ended up playing bocce ball with the campers, as well as options for a toss game, bubbles, and puzzles for any who didn't want to be as active. Some of the campers in the group were Special Olympians, and bocce is one of the events they compete in. They were really good, and it was fun to interact with them and hear them talk a little bit about their Special Olympics experience. While we had recreation, some campers had worship prep for the evening and the rest were in crafts.

I had my first experience leading a Bible lesson group Sunday evening. My group had the story of Saul's conversion, so I had looked over the lesson beforehand to get a few ideas for what I could do with it. However, I hadn't planned for the fact that a lot of my group was nonverbal. This was a completely new experience for me, and I'm very thankful for my co-leader, who jumped in several times when I needed help. It was really interesting for me to have this group, since I'll be a Speech-Language Pathologist by the time I'm out of college, but it also gave me a ton of respect for those who work with nonverbal people on a daily basis. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of close attention to the little cues they give --  a skill I am only starting to develop.

Tonight I was able to attend the staff meeting, which was really nice. We went over the list of the campers and discussed anything we had observed -- any good things we noticed or any challenges to work on as a staff. We also assigned jobs and talked about special events the next day. It was so great to have time as a collective staff to reflect on the day and talk about what we could do differently the next day. We had a really great staff, and it was awesome to spend some time with all of them together.  

Day 2 was also a good day; however after today, I was feeling quite a bit more tired and slightly overwhelmed by the challenges I knew I would face for the next few days.

Friday, June 21 and Saturday, June 22 -- Special Person's Overnight Camp

Special Person's Overnight Camp was probably the camp I was most nervous for. I had never worked at this camp or even visited, so I had not much of an idea of what to expect. I had heard many stories about how it was the most exhausting or how I wouldn't get much sleep, among other things. For those of you not familiar with this Camp Blessing camp, the campers are all special needs adults who spend a week overnight in the cabins. The goal is to teach them more about Jesus and the Christian faith, but the larger service is to give their caregivers a week off since they care for them every other week of the year. Like all other camps, the staff is completely volunteer-based. 

On Friday, all the staff arrived. We all ate supper and then met for a staff meeting about rules, suggestions, and how the week was to be run. The camp included staff from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, California, Colorado, and New York, which is one of my favorite parts about camp -- it brings in people from all across the country. The theme for the week was "Following Jesus", and each day had a different theme phrase: "When we follow Jesus, he changes our hearts, changes our lives, helps us, and saves us." During this time, we also went over the list of campers and any important things to know about them, as well as procedures for bathing and grooming, as well as important health information. The directors gave all of us a packet including camper information, daily schedules, staff information, and explanations for different things during the week. After this, all of the study leaders and I all met to decide who would teach each lesson and who would pair together each day to help with the study groups.  

On Saturday, we had a bit of a set-back. The power went out during the night due to a car crash further down on the highway, so the camper arrival time was delayed several hours. Although this was disappointing, it also gave us a good amount of time to regroup, meet with the other staff to plan the day, look through the list of campers again, and finish anything that could be done ahead of time. 

The campers began to arrive around 1 pm, and the staff helped them get settled into their cabins and get their beds all set up. In my cabin, we had 3 staff and 5 campers. Overall, the camp included 19 campers total. Once everyone had arrived and was settled in, we had a short worship service and introduced the three work crews -- Grace, Peace, and Joy. These were to be their study groups, as well as craft and clean-up crews during the week. They met to talk about what makes each of them special, and they collectively made 2 goals for the rest of the week. They learned what the lesson was to be for the week and were given some free time before dinner. I took this time to wander through the campers and try to learn names. In the evening, I helped with the story about Jesus healing the 10 lepers. We taught the lesson and created a skit to perform the next day. We finished the day with snack and a campfire. I stayed in the cabin during the staff meeting, and it was a bit of a challenge to get the campers to go to sleep since they were all excited to be at camp and not super tired at this point in the week. 

My impressions after day one were pretty positive -- I enjoyed working with and talking to all of the campers. We had a great staff to work with, the day was very well organized, and we didn't have any major problems or set-backs so far. Overall, I was excited to see what the next day would bring.