Every summer since birth, I have always attended church camp. It was always my favorite time of the year. I took my first steps, said my first words, and made my first friends at Mountain View Christian Camp in Alto, New Mexico. I dreamed of the day when I would be old enough to be a camp counselor myself like all of those college students I used to look up to.
When I finally finished my first year of university and was eligible to be a counselor, it was the summer of 2021 and COVID was still out and about messing with everyone’s group gatherings. Unfortunately, Mountain View did not have the resources to open that summer, but a good friend of mine told me about her camp in Linden, Virginia. Camp WaMaVa was looking for counselors and I was thrilled to have an opportunity to be a counselor like I had always wanted.
Being a camp counselor at WaMaVa was everything I could have hoped for and more. I spent six weeks running around with kids from 3rd to 12th grade. It was so much fun to get to know my campers and learn about who they are. Investing in their spiritual life by making them feel safe and seen, was a gift to both myself and my campers. I am proud to have been an example to them in the way that my counselors were always an example to me growing up.
My time at WaMaVa was also transformative because of the training and education I received. In my first week, we received training on conflict resolution, de-escalation, disability support, cpr, community engagement and other things that I have continued to use in my daily life and career since. My favorite training from the summer was a session taught by Dr. Andrea Morris, from Virginia Tech. She talked about navigating cultural and racial diversity and building intentional community through interpersonal similarities and differences.
The strategies I learned from Dr. Morris were put to good use during my time as a counselor. WaMaVa is a comparably cheap overnight camp located in the mountains of Virginia about an hour outside of Washington DC, so it attracts both rural and inner city kids. The multitude of racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and religious differences among the campers often invited conflict, especially for those at the age where comparison and the development of self identity is natural. I learned a lot about myself, children, and humanity through my experiences with the campers at WaMaVa.
