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.