Student Blog: My Time as a Summer Camp Counselor

I was blessed enough to spend the summer out at Green Pastures Christian Retreat Center as a camp counselor. I look forward to summer camp every year. I don’t have the stresses that come with being at school, I can just relax and play. I got to be at all three weekends of Green Pasture’s annual Performing Arts Christian Camp or PAC Camp this year and it was amazing. I always leave camp feeling recharged spiritually and mentally. This is one of the most important, if not the most important thing I do all year and I wanted to take you through what camp looks like for me as a counselor and what exactly PAC is.

PAC is a two-day, one-night camp that is jam-packed full of activities. Campers arrive at 7:30ish am on Friday and are greeted with cheers and excitement as they walk through our doors and pull into the parking lot. We then have our camp orientation at 8:15am and talk about what we do at performing arts camp and what the rules are and other things like that. Then it is time for the first performance session! The campers are divided into three or four large groups, and throughout the weekend they travel from performance session to performance session getting the opportunity to perform in many different aspects of performing arts. The performing sessions include Drama, Mime, Music, Dance, and Art. I am a drama counselor and darn proud of it. In drama, we basically do a bunch of improv games and laugh a whole lot. We are pretty crazy and it’s always a fun time. The campers never fail to say the most clever and silly things. I love being a drama counselor. Dance and music are pretty much what they sound like, the campers learn a song or a dance and then get to perform it later on at one of our stage performance sessions which I’ll chat about a lil bit later. Art is where the campers get to draw and make videos and be creative and then all of their drawings and videos are put together in one big video that is shown as well, they are always super cool to see. Now mime, this is the one I always get the most questions about--and no the campers do not dress up in mime outfits and pretend to be in a box. In mime, campers tell a story with music without saying any words and just act different things out. I love watching the mimes and seeing what the counselors all come up with. I love it so much. Those are all the performance sessions! Each group of campers goes to each one by the end of camp and gets a little taste of everything!

After the first performance session, it is of course snack time. We are always well-fed. Once we wrap up snack it is time for our first stage performance! Throughout the weekend we have 5 stage performance times where campers or counselors can sign up and do a performance. Whether its singing a song, doing a dance, telling a joke, or doing the macareana-it can be anything. This year, my friend Carter put his leg behind his head, and I told as many jokes as I could before he had to put his leg down. It was quite silly. This is also when the performance session performances go. So any of the dances, the mimes, the songs, and the art videos are done during these as well. I love the stage performances, I love watching all of us show of our different and unique talents. We normally end the stage performances with a skit called Camper and God, where a counselor will go and have a conversation with God. This year I got to be the camper and I also got to help write some of the scripts for it, and that was so amazing. I learned a lot by doing it and I had a blast.

Next up it was time for small group! Small group a smaller group of campers, around 5-7, with 2 or 3 counselors and it’s a chance to get to know a smaller group of people and chat about anything we want to. It’s a safe space to talk and ask questions. I like small group a lot, it gives us a chance to get to know some of the campers more and I know my own faith has also grown from getting to do them. I also like it because you also get to lead a group with another counselor, and then I get to know them more and we always become closer by the end of the weekend and I like that a lot too. I loved my small groups this year so much and I miss them all already.

After small group it was lunchtime! I love camp food, I look forward to it all year long, it’s so yummy and our cooks are amazing. They volunteer their time every year to feed us and we are so grateful for them. After lunch, it was free time! This is time for the campers to do any activity they want! They can play table games, my personal favorite is carpet ball, peace love carpet ball, they can play instruments upstairs in the sanctuary and learn how to play instruments, they can go fishing, they can learn a dance-this is time for them to do what they want, while we have a staff meeting. 

After all that jazz, it is time for praise and worship! This is where we all just spend some time together singing some praise songs and getting ready for the afternoon ahead of us. This summer I got to lead one of the worship sets with my really good friend Colton, and that was a huge blessing. After that, it was time for two more performance sessions! Normally, all of the counselors get a one off session where we don’t have a group of campers coming to our session, so we can join another session or take that hour to ourselves to lay down and rest up. I joined art during one of my off sessions, but all the other weekends I did indeed take a much-needed nap.

After the last performance session of the day, the campers get some more free time, and then we have one more staff meeting to solidify game plans for the evening and go over any housekeeping things that need to be talked about. Then it is time for dinner, followed by another stage performance session. I really like the nighttime performance sessions, everyone is always super pumped following dinner time and we are all excited to see what the Master of Ceremonies has in store for us. The Master of Ceremonies or the MC’s-the two silly folks who run the performance sessions and who campers sign up with, they make sure everything goes smoothly. They do a ton of work for camp and we are all super grateful for them. For the past few years it has been our good friends, Isaac and Alex and they truly are incredible and camp wouldn’t be the same without em!

After stage performance 2, we meet up in our small groups again to chat about our days and check in and see how things are going. After that, we do something that is so special and one of my favorite parts of camp which is the firewalk. This camp takes place at Green Pastures Christian Retreat Center which is a beautiful campground that has a pond and a few trails as well, so every year, weather permitting, we do the firewalk. This is where we take the campers along a path that starts at our amphitheater and ends in the main building. It goes through the woods a little bit and then through our east field. Along the path are prayers and players. The prayers are set up and as each small group goes on the path, the prayers pray for one camper individually and by the end of the walk each camper has been individually prayed for. The players are also stationed on the firewalk and they play music or sing to help set the mood for the walk. I think this is so cool, I got to be a player and prayer this year and it is one of my favorite things ever. 

After the firewalk, we have a *safe* indoor campfire with candles, where anyone can get up and share a story, a Bible verse, anything they want, and it’s a time for everyone to share if they want to. Then it is time for one more snack time, then time for bed.

As dorm mom for this camp season, I got the lovely pleasure of making sure all the girlies got to bed on time and I also got to read them a bedtime story to send them off to sleep, which I absolutely love.

Then it was time to rise and shine-the campers are woken up by a very special alarm hehe, then we all get up, get ready, and head to breakfast! Once breakfast is served and we are all talking and eating our breakfast, we hear our attention being wanted, by none other than our MCs. And now ladies and gentlemen, it is time, for the toast song. Oh yes, every Saturday morning out at Green Pastures, we get serenaded with a lovely rendition of the toast song. I love it, it;s silly, it’s a tradition, we purposely have a toaster that is broken that we keep in the kitchen every year specifically for the toast song. If you don’t know what the toast song is, I 10/10 recommend looking it up, Yeah toast.

After that, we have praise and worship time, where we always start our morning off with Noah’s arky song, a song we all know and love, another camp tradition. After that, it is performance session time! We then follow pretty much the same schedule as yesterday, performance session, stage performance 3, small group, lunch, free time/staff meeting, praise and worship, performance session, *CAMP CLEAN UP aka the best part of camp*, stage performance 4, free time/staff meeting, dinner, then the final stage performance of the weekend. This one is always a lil special, we end the performance session with Grace and God, and then we always take like a five-minute break, then come back for a special performance. The special performance normally always makes me cry, it’s normally a praise song that gets us in the right mindset for the rest of the evening. It’s always really special and hits us right in the heart. After that, we have one final small group. This small group is always a little bittersweet because it’s the last one we have and we get to talk to the campers one last time about whatever is on their hearts and minds. After small group, it’s time for another one of my favorite parts of camp, we have altar time. This is time for any of us to just sit in God’s presence, or pray and just talk to Him, or pray with each other, really anything you feel comfortable doing. There’s music playing in the background, it’s always really nice and cool to see what God is doing. Once we wrap up altar time, we always end camp with one big dance party then we all say our goodbyes. Saying goodbye is probably one of the hardest parts. I hate having to leave everyone. It sucks big time. We all go back to our normal lives. But I always leave at least a little different from when I came in. Always a little bit better.

I could yap and yap and yap about this camp for days. I know it sounds cliche and silly, but I truly am the most real version of myself when I am there. Walking through the doors always feels like I’m coming home. Even though most of us only get to see each other once a year, when we come back together again, it’s like we never left. We always catch up and we’re just like family. I love all of them so dearly and wouldn’t be where I am without them. I get to be spiritually recharged and it helps fuel me up for the school year. I already miss it.

Camp season is officially over for the summer, but If you are interested in this camp or anything else that goes on at Green Pastures I will have the link to their website right here. I love being Camp Counselor Grace. 311 days til next year. As always, go do great things.

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