Saturday:Taking it Home
Saturday was the final day of camp. Families arrived to camp around 9:00 a.m., after reuniting with their teens, they were able to go on a tour of campus before Mass. The Saturday Mass was said in honor of Mary, the Mother of God, a great role model to look to for help on the final day of camp, as the teens prepared to go home.
Families were able to experience camp just like their teens. We had a session exactly like our nightly sessions. With music and dancing led by our musician, Ben and a talk by Jon, our host. Jon started out by giving a summary of the whole week, so that the families would know what their kids had done and talked about throughout the week. Jon also challenged the families and the campers to go deeper than the surface when talking about their week at camp. He told the parents to not be okay with their child's answer of "Schlitterbahn" as their favorite camp activity. He challenged the teens to be open to their parents about their favorite spiritual activities, such as the letter writing night on Thursday or Adoration or Confession on Friday. I have never experience such a powerful and more impacting Parent Session than this one. Campers did step up to the challenge, I heard a testimony of a parent coming up to another director and telling her that we had really made a difference in her son's life because he shared with his family that his favorite part was Adoration. After Jon talked we heard testimonies from a few campers about their experience over the past week, as well as a College staff who has worked at camp for the past four years. You could really see the Holy Spirit moving through all of their testimonies.After the testimonies, we were able to meet the high school staff, also known as "Savio Servants" who worked behind the scenes setting up activities, managing the camp store, taking pictures and videos, cooking meals and washing dishes, etc. They did "cardboard testimonies," so we were able to read how camp and their faith has impacted their lives. Then parents were also introduced to the college students and directors.
Jon left us with these questions from Father Mike Schmitz to contemplate:
1. Do you actually believe Mass is making a difference in your life? We don't just watch Mass, we participate in it!
2. Are you living your life as if life outside of the Church is different than your life inside the Church? How can your outside faith life reflect what's going on inside your faith life?
3. You have to be willing to change.
Lastly, we watched the Week 2 Camp Savio video. Watch it here:
You can also got back and watch the Live Stream videos here: http://livestream.com/accounts/6531939/events/4080765.
I believe that Camp Savio will impact St. Charles Borromeo Parish over the next years, I cannot wait to bring more teens next year!
Thanks for following!
God bless,
Jen DeCoster
Director of Youth Ministry & Camp Savio Director