Serving at Camp Re-NEW-All by Carson
Camp Re-NEW-All is a Catholic camp located in Cassville, MO. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, but that's beside the point. Camp is a fun place where we get to go to Mass, learn about our faith, and do a lot of other crazy games and traditions. I've been going since my fifth-grade year, and this year I was old enough to be a staff member.
There are a lot of different staff positions such as working kitchen, sports and nature, waterfront, being a counselor, teaching faith formation, and a few other positions. This year, for both sessions that I went (Week 2 and Week 4), I was a counselor. Counselors watch a certain group of kids assigned to them the whole week and basically be their moms and dads for the week.
Week 2 went relatively smoothly, considering the circumstances. They combined 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade boys into one group that I dealt with. Luckily it wasn't just me. I was co-senior staff with another guy, and we had a junior counselor to work with.
The only problem we really had was some campers taking the Lord's name in vain, but we were able to gently correct them on that for the most part. I think the kids from this session had a pretty good time.
Week 4, two weeks later, was a completely different story. It was somewhat harder because this was a session I had never gone to, so I didn't know too many of the staff members. I was a counselor for the 7th and 8th-grade boys, which was a smaller group than the other week. It was just me as the senior counselor, with a junior counselor whose name we won't mention here.
The week started out okay, though there were a lot more problems than the other week. It seemed like, at this session, not a lot of the boys' staff members really cared if any of the campers were cussing or taking the Lord's name in vain, or making inappropriate jokes. If anything, some encouraged it, especially my junior staff member. I knew this was definitely not a good environment for campers to be around.
The best I could do at that time was correct them and give them the reasons why not to do those things, though it was hard when others were not being a good example for them. The line was drawn when some good-hearted campers told me that my junior counselor was vaping with some of my other campers. This just made me so angry that this was the reputation STAFF MEMBERS were giving for this camp.
I let the camp directors know, and they sent my junior counselor home. After this, the campers made a complete turnaround. The kids who were previously disengaged and dirty-mouthed got a lot more energetic and respectful.
This isn't to put me into a perfect light as a perfect counselor or anything; I definitely wasn't. It's just good to show the impact we can make on people with our witness. What would've happened if I didn't stop any of the bad stuff happening because I wasn't there? My junior counselor would have been a senior as they were short on staff, and campers would have most likely followed him down a bad path, getting into worse and worse habits.
This is kind of a sad blog post as, up until now, camp has been a fun and holy place for me personally. I still suggest going to Camp Re-NEW-all as a camper, as long as you have someone you know at that session who can keep an eye out for you. If you're wanting to be a staff member, just make sure you strive to do what's right. Also, go to the week called 2C!
Thank you for reading my blogpost. Haffa goodday.
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