I went with my church’s high school group to a camp in Etna Ca called Kidder Creek. Here we helped clean up a camp in preparation for summer. This was starkly different from what most students viewed as serving. Where many of them see serving as feeding the homeless, or serving at a food shelter this was serving in a completely new way. This was manual labor that these students may never see the people whom they are serving. The camp is a christian adventure camp that runs just during the summer. Kids from all walks of life come to this camp and the students that came up that week to serve those kids will probably never even see them. It brought a whole new meaning to humble leadership.

During the week the students would perform laborious tasks such as raking, picking up slash, and digging/ cleaning out ponds. This is the brunt work of the camp, but things that have to get done in order for the camp to run. It was a very thankless job but I think it was an extremely good experience for these students. I personally took part in raking with a group of 10 students for the week. During the time of serving the camp I was able to serve these students and minister to them. It was an extremely successful week in terms of ministry. The students learned a lot about what service means as did I.