Helping students experience camp and mission trips
Friday, May 06, 2011
At CAC, we hope summer camps and mission trips serve as ‘mountaintops’ for students--experiences that bring a closer relationship with God.
If you’d like to help an East St. Louis child or teen through a trip this summer, please contact Cyra at (618) 874-5615 ext. 208 or cyra[at]cacesl.org. Read more about these summer opportunities below!
At Camp Penuel in Ironton, Mo. and Kids Across America in Branson, Mo., kids’ prerogative is to be kids. For two weeks in July, our kids build campfires, roast marshmallows, and paddle canoes. They eat, sleep, play, worship, and live in community without their usual worries of mealtime, bedtime, what’s next, and who’s in charge. These camps give our kids a compact week of what CAC hopes to develop in them throughout the year: the stuff to navigate life.
So it is true, too, of teen mission trips. Third world experiences make our teens better citizens, Christians, and in time, parents. Their minds are bigger. Their view of poverty is stretched. They grasp that decisions made in America affect the global community--people whose names they know.
In the thick of two jungles this July, one group of CAC youth will teach English to South African children while a second group will minister to elementary kids at a Christian camp in Belize. In Belize, students will renovate the camp we first visited in 2008. A building we restored those three summers ago has become the camp’s most functional space. CAC teens set a standard, and they will continue in that work.
Here’s a story of one of the neatest relational things we’ve observed on mission: Traveling with a suburban church partner, our teens fold together so well with this group, the families we serve do not realize we are two. It is a picture of the Kingdom. Perhaps most inspiring, though, is that our teens’ comfort in distress--their ability to relate in native lands and inner cities--assures the mission team. CAC kids’ resiliency becomes, then, a leadership quality.
We hope you’ll consider joining us to make these experiences a reality for kids at CAC!
If you’d like to help an East St. Louis child or teen through a trip this summer, please contact Cyra at (618) 874-5615 ext. 208 or cyra[at]cacesl.org. Read more about these summer opportunities below!
At Camp Penuel in Ironton, Mo. and Kids Across America in Branson, Mo., kids’ prerogative is to be kids. For two weeks in July, our kids build campfires, roast marshmallows, and paddle canoes. They eat, sleep, play, worship, and live in community without their usual worries of mealtime, bedtime, what’s next, and who’s in charge. These camps give our kids a compact week of what CAC hopes to develop in them throughout the year: the stuff to navigate life.
So it is true, too, of teen mission trips. Third world experiences make our teens better citizens, Christians, and in time, parents. Their minds are bigger. Their view of poverty is stretched. They grasp that decisions made in America affect the global community--people whose names they know.
In the thick of two jungles this July, one group of CAC youth will teach English to South African children while a second group will minister to elementary kids at a Christian camp in Belize. In Belize, students will renovate the camp we first visited in 2008. A building we restored those three summers ago has become the camp’s most functional space. CAC teens set a standard, and they will continue in that work.
Here’s a story of one of the neatest relational things we’ve observed on mission: Traveling with a suburban church partner, our teens fold together so well with this group, the families we serve do not realize we are two. It is a picture of the Kingdom. Perhaps most inspiring, though, is that our teens’ comfort in distress--their ability to relate in native lands and inner cities--assures the mission team. CAC kids’ resiliency becomes, then, a leadership quality.
We hope you’ll consider joining us to make these experiences a reality for kids at CAC!