On Saturday morning, over one hundred kids ages eight to eleven years old assembled for a morning of faith-building fun at a church summer camp with the theme “anchored in Christ.”
The campers broke into five groups captained by youth volunteers and rotated through stations that each focused on something that Christ does for us. At each station, adult volunteers told stories from Jesus’s life and connected the narratives to an activity.
At one station, children heard the story of Jesus calming the storm and talked about ways Jesus offers us peace when life gets difficult. Then the kids performed a series of yoga poses to reenact the story, beginning with—of course—boat pose.
In the gym, they learned the story of Jesus calling his disciples to be “fishers of men” and then played a variation on the game “infection,” where they were called to “gather” the others by tagging them. When only one child was left untagged, they formed a “net” of kids from one side of the room to the other until the last child was tagged.
Monroe, a ten-year-old heading into fifth grade, said her favorite activity was making friendship bracelets, which followed a discussion of the Savior’s love for us. She learned that “whenever you’re unstable, if you are anchored to Christ, you become stable again.”
One of the youth captains, Ashely Sallaway—an opera student home for the summer from Manhattan School of Music in NYC—said during her favorite activity, her rowdy group of kids took turns saying “I will let Christ be my anchor,” and as they spoke, the whole tone of the activity changed into one of reverence. “I love the key words that the teachers are giving them: anchor, Christ, comfort, stability, safety,” she said. “I think that now is the perfect time for them to start thinking about why they’re being kind and why they’re being obedient. And I think that this [camp] will help them start to connect those dots.”
Campers and leaders alike observed the significance of sharing a few faith-promoting hours with friends and peers. Trace, an eight-year-old going into third grade this year, said, “It’s special to be with other people my age, and I’m having a lot of fun from doing this.”
Laura Hernandez, president of the children’s ministry, said, “It’s so important for kids to step away from the busy-ness and to have that opportunity to focus on Jesus.” She added, “There’s a lot of strength when you’re with your peers learning about the Savior. It creates a sense of community and that they are there to help each other in life and that they’re not alone.”
At the close of the camp, Hernandez addressed the whole group of campers. The kids would be walking into new spaces this upcoming school year, she acknowledged: new classrooms, new sports teams, new extracurriculars. “I want you to remember one thing: that wherever you walk,” she said, “you’re not walking alone. We’re walking with Jesus.”