Hayden's Camp Experience

I grew up in a small town in Northwestern Ontario 3 hours south of camp. I attended a camp near where I lived ever since I was old enough to go and dreamed of one day becoming a staff at the camp. However, due to a variety of factors, the camp had to sadly shut down right before I was old enough to staff. Despite this, God allowed me to serve in other ways in my community, but I had a longing and a desire to serve and to give more.

My youth group came to camp in 2023 for a winter retreat. During this retreat I got to see the facilities at camp and to see the people. At the end of the retreat, the camp staff played a summer staff promotional video, and after the video I said that I was going to come as summer staff. However, it wasn’t until 2024 that I decided to come for a week as a staff.

To me camp is a place where God is very obviously present and working, and when I came for a week, God placed it on my heart to come back for two more weeks that summer. The 3 weeks of camp that I spent here changed my life. What I got to experience, and what I saw at camp changed my perspective and encouraged me to take further steps to deepen my faith.

I got to experience love from people who had no idea who I was, and how to show love to others. The spiritual theme at camp that summer was love, and I haven’t seen an atmosphere like that before, where everyone was cared for, everyone was checking in on each other and when they weren’t okay, people would run to them and make sure they were okay.

After that summer, I left feeling wishing that I could give more. I had one camper give his life to Christ, but I wanted to help him with his faith, but I did not live near him. I wanted to pour out into his and other campers' lives. So I looked into options at camp to see how I could do that, this led me to become a camp intern. I could live at camp and pour into campers and other staff year round. So a week after I graduated, I moved to camp. Camp is amazing, God is visibly at work in everyone’s lives. The staff at camp want everyone who comes to camp to get one step closer to Jesus. Whether that is their first step, or one of their many steps with the Lord. I got to see 7 campers give their lives to Christ, and I’ll get to see where they go with their new faith. Camp is a pretty sweet place, but you’ll only understand what I’m talking about if you come check it out yourself!