This week many area youth left for a week long retreat at church camp. The youth may not realize it yet, but this will become one of their favorite childhood memories.
Growing up, the week-long church camp was the highlight of my summer. Camp Wesley Pines is where I went growing up and some of my favorite childhood memories are centered on those activities that were crammed into five days.
Each summer was spent at Camp Wesley Pines from my pre-teen years up until I became old enough to graduate up to CIT (Counselor-in-Training). I never actually made it past serving as a CIT into an actual counselor because I quickly realized it was way more fun being the camper instead of the counselor.
Those hot summer days were so carefree where we made new friends each summer. In the beginning, it was exciting to get the “list” of items that we needed to bring to camp. For some reason, it was a big deal for me and Mama to go to Howard Brothers and buy all the items that were on my “bring to camp” list. I would get excited to get my own bug spray, rain gear, shorts and shirt outfits, and other camping necessities.
Canteen time was also a big deal. We would get our own spending money for camp that week. Our own spending money was few and far between when you are raised in a house full of kids. Not that I’m complaining, but when you grow up with a lot of siblings you learn that you pretty much have to share everything all the time. We would feel rich when we left for camp because we had our own spending money. By the end of the week, we left going back home with the same feeling of being rich. The difference would be we started camp feeling rich because of money but left us feeling rich because we had just spent a week camping and learning about God and nature.
The nature walks, worship at the Tabernacle, arts and crafts and pool time was all part of the week long fun.
Church camp and camping in general was a big part of our growing up. Our parents took us to pretty much every state park in Mississippi all during the summer. “When are we going camping?” was the question we asked all the time.
The years growing up living in a pop-up camper and being able to walk around campgrounds barefooted as a yard dog was always some of the best times we had. Of course, we were always the loud family that pulled up in the camp ground with a bunch of young’uns hooting and hollering, loaf of bread on the dashboard and no order or organization whatsoever to our campground set up experience. There usually was lots of yelling after my Dad would realize that one of us forgot to pack the canopy stakes and string or some other necessary item we needed. There was always something that we forgot and it was usually a big deal to my Dad.
After the campsite would get set up, my parents usually ran us off to explore and that is when we would always make new friends.
Since we didn’t have the advantage of cell phones and texting in the 70’s, we actually would “pen pal” the new friends we made and send letters through the mail long after we left the campground heading back home.
I hope and pray that the youth from local churches have a spiritual, safe camping experience which they will want to carry on for many generations.
