Saturday, August 28, 2010

Where God Has Blessed (Part 1)

After our trip to Colombia I drove back to Camp Barakel straight from Detroit. If you don’t know my driving habits, leaving for a 3 hour trip at 12:30am is not too abnormal. I was excited to get back into the swing of summer, and I started out helping as a Young Adult Programer (YAP). I worked on the zipline and as a lifeguard for a couple days. I thought I’d be doing a lot of YAP work over the summer but it turned out that God quite a few curveballs planned for the summer.


Counseling:
My first 4 weeks were spent counseling on the West side of camp. Three weeks with junior campers (3rd - 6th grade) then a week with middle school kids (6th - 8th grade). Counseling was great. God really blessed me with campers that I felt responded well to my style of counseling. All the speakers were excellent and they each had unique angles to teach the kids with.

 
A day of counseling starts at 7:30am with the camp bell. Usually counselors are up even an hour earlier than that to prepare for the day. Tribes go out into the woods to have a “tribe talk” teaching about the summer memory verse, 1st John 1:3-6. Then flag raising and breakfast, chores, followed by morning clubs.  Clubs are a rotation of activities including soccer, a mystery trail, Wecandoits (team building obstacle courses), and lakefront. After the clubs, campers would go to a morning chapel and a 12:30pm lunch.


 
In the afternoon the campers have time in the cabin to memorize verses and write letters home. This is followed by free time when campers get 3 hours to work on archery and riflery awards, swim in the lake, purchase toys and snacks at the trading post, or time to check out Man Crafts (Handcrafts). Counselors use this time to talk to their campers about their relationship with God. This is big stuff at camp for a lot of kids that haven’t been challenged, or just want some help sorting out Biblical truths. Supper follows free time, and after that we go to ambush. Ambush is a surprise game that involves all the West Side together, usually on one field. It’s amazing to watch 160 kids and counselors playing one game at the same time. The evening is rounded out with evening chapel (everyone gets dressed up!) and a tribe talk before bed time. The evening tribe talk is a time for the campers to ask questions, and many good one on one conversations happen on the porches of the lodges.

Counseling is the focus of all of camp because it is where the Gospel is delivered in the most personal way. It was a lot of fun to see kids try to stretch and grow in their relationship with God and many take that first step, putting their faith in Jesus Christ as their savior.

Engineer Counseling:
This position needs some explaining of the Summer Tech and Engineer Program (STEP). All summer there is a crew of about 30 high school kids that help clean up after meals, work the free time activities, and perform maintenance work around camp. They usually work a week at a time, and they are arguably the hardest workers at camp. Techs are girls, and engineers are guys. There are 2 tech counselors and 2 engineer counselors that coordinate the work and fun for each week.


An average day of engineering at Camp Barakel includes doing dishes for all three meals, about 6 hours of labor (usually cutting wood), and some type of game for the night. The day starts and ends with bible studies and there is a STEP chapel every evening.

Counseling for High School kids was challenging in some ways, but overall it was a lot of fun. Their schedule is so tight that it’s hard to fit in much needed showers and even personal Bible study. I stepped in as an engineer counselor for one of the regular guys who was getting a week of rest. The engineers are generally well behaved kids who just want to grow with God and they know that Camp Barakel provides that opportunity. Even if it takes a lot of work to do it.

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