Some of my most fond memories from camp are the intentional moments that I have had with my campers. Although campers love all of the fun activities we do together as a cabin, I have learned that the times I get to spend one-on-one with a camper are the times that make them feel loved, seen, and valued. I will admit that I was not able to spend intentional time with every single camper, and I wish that I was able to sit with each and every girl and really get to know them better. However, for those that I was able to be with, and have these good long conversations, it always was a beautiful opportunity for these girls to chat about anything that was on their minds. As a counselor, it is my job to love sacrificially, and one way that I have learned I can do that is by listening and simply being there for people.
Some of the best ways that I was able to have intentional moments with my campers is to spend time in the Bible with them. While some girls came into camp with a pretty good knowledge of Christian faiths, and usually grew up in a Christian home, I had lots of girls that didn’t know much about Jesus, what the Bible is, or the idea of the Gospel. Naturally, they had lots of questions, and it was so beautiful to see that they were curious to learn. In addition, I have respect for them asking questions, because that can be pretty scary, and I know that I personally can struggle with asking questions when I feel like everybody else knows the answer.
There are two specific moments that really stick out to me, both are beautiful and curious girls that are seeking truth.
One week, I had a girl that had lots of questions concerning faith, salvation, and different doctrinal beliefs. She would ask questions on the way to different activities, and always had great questions and points to add to our CrossTalks each night. I could tell that she was searching for truth, but in her life, she has been exposed to so many different belief systems and denominations, so she was trying to sort out what she believed and what the Bible said. I really relate to her position, because as you grow older, you stop just blindly accepting what people say and begin examining it to see if this is true. In fact, this is a wise thing, because if you believe something simply because your pastor or authority figure said it, and not because you checked to see what the Bible actually says about it, your final authority is not the words of God, but the beliefs and opinions of flawed human beings.
With all of that to say, she wanted answers, and the Bible can seem big and daunting when you want to find truth. Thankfully, I was able to talk to her after CrossTalk for a few nights, and pull out a few pieces of Scripture that related to what she was asking questions about. Sometimes, I could remember specific passages and could find them myself, but there were many more times where I had to research and find it, because I didn’t know where to find it myself. God gave me these opportunities to simply show her Scripture, and get to talk with her about her beliefs and different aspects of salvation and the faith. It was so cool to see her ask questions and really dig into it, because it showed a real maturity in her faith, and I really admire that about her. I hope that she has continued to ask questions and be curious, and that she found people in her life that she can ask these questions to and allow herself to be vulnerable with. I am so proud of her, and I trust her, because she truly wants to know what God has planned for her, and how she can be a part of it.
The second memory that I have concerning intentional moments is one of the sweetest memories that I have at camp. During one of the elementary weeks, I had a girl that was just constantly flipping through the pages of her Bible. She had one of those Bibles that were geared towards kids, with pictures of stories and characters, and brightly colored diagrams and explanations of different passages of the Bible. One of these pages had a list of the timeline of Jesus, including his birth, death and resurrection, and all of his miracles that are mentioned in the Gospels. The very first night of camp, she began asking about all of these different stories, and once I realized that her curiosity was pretty much endless, I asked her if she wanted to read one of the Bible stories together before the cabin went to bed. She said yes, and so before I went to turn the lights off for the night, she came over and sat on my bed with me, and we read a story about Jesus.
So, in my personal life story, I grew up in a Christian home, and always went to church, so I have always been familiar with the different stories of the Bible, whether it be Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus feeding the 5,000, and the stories of how Easter and Christmas came to be. It was never something I remember learning, but something that I feel like I have always known.
Because of that, it was so cool for me to be able to see a girl read these stories for the first time, and being genuinely shocked when Jesus did something that was either unexpected or just totally impossible. Her parents weren’t strong believers, so even though she knew a little bit of who Jesus was, she didn’t grow up going to Sunday school and learning the fundamentals of Christianity.
So, for the rest of the week, she would come over to my bed before lights out, and we would read a different story. She asked questions, and was so curious about everything the Bible had to say. I even got to explain what Christmas and Easter really are, and how it is more about Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection than about candy, presents, and being with family. You never really know much about a camper’s personal life, and so I sometimes never know if the family they are going back to are going to invest in what they learned at camp, or just wave it away. So, it is so cool to at least be able to plant these seeds in the campers’ lives, and at least make sure that camp is a place where they can seek out truth and feel loved.
Spending time reading Bible stories with this camper really helped us form a bond, and it helped us have great conversations. I was honestly really sad when she left at the end of the week, because I just wanted to continue fueling that curiosity and investing in her. However, I was able to encourage her to ask her parents to read more Bible stories with her, and I hope that this is something that she was able to do with them.
Sometimes, intentional moments look like talking about hard things and really pouring into them about God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice for us. However, intentional moments can even just be sitting with a camper that doesn’t want to do an activity, and just showing them that they are worth sitting out of a fun activity for. Each and every person feels loved in a different way, and once you can learn what makes them feel loved, and can be intentional with how you love them, it will help you grow closer with them and strengthen those relationships. We are called to love others, and if we can challenge ourselves to be intentional with every interaction we have, we can love others sacrificially like Christ.
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