A Mom and Child Trail: Six Days of Perambulation

M and I arrived at Lake Champion, a Young Life (YL) Camp (resort) located near the junction of PA, NJ, and NY near Port Jervis, NY, on August 6th after completing an 11-day anniversary trip to parts north (see previous blog). Click on the links for specific information published by these institutions. The camp offers a week-long camp experience for teenagers from all over the US and YL has a number of these camps in the US and abroad. In addition to a variety of fabulous camp activities and entertainments, the campers have the opportunity to hear about Christianity, in particular, the person of Jesus described in the Bible. 
For this particular week, the campers consisted of teen moms (or expectant ones) and their children as part of YoungLives, a specific ministry under the YL umbrella. Our mission was to care for the children during the day and evening so the moms could be liberated to experience the camp program. During specified periods of the day, the nurseries would be open and moms could drop off their children. M's job was to take care of children in the 6 months old nursery along with some other women. My job was to be a "runner", someone available to go get the stuff the nurseries needed, like diapers, wipes, formula, snacks, and to deal with other stuff to support the care-givers. This often resulted in an ad hoc child-care assignment (we all were trained accordingly) when things got dicey (more unhappy babies than care-givers could handle at one time).
So for 6 days M spent a significant amount of time holding babies, and doing all the other things to keep them happy, which included a fair amount of pushing a perambulator. Most of these moms are from urban environments that differ drastically from the beauty and serenity of the camp, so this environment was also new to the tots as well. I spent 6 days hoofing it around camp making deliveries and just taking care of whatever business was pressing. My center of gravity was Ferndale where M and her group were stationed; this was her dorm space and mine as well (all the women stayed in several rooms and since there were so few guys we took up one room on the top floor of the same dorm). I spent literally hours pushing a stroller with a small one who was somehow placated by the motion and scenery, thank God!
All in all the experience was quite rewarding; we were not campers but workers so there was little time for us to enjoy the activities available at the camp, though I did have a spur-of-the-moment opportunity to take on the challenge of the ropes course since we were there child-minding and some participant slots were unfilled. As a runner, I did have the opportunity to take in the beauty of the out-of-doors more than the others and for that I am thankful, and I did walk my fool legs off as I criss-crossed the camp. Having a small backpack was convenient and M suggested I dig out my old Boy Scout canvas backpack from 45 years ago (that boy smells good!) and use it to hold the stuff I needed with me. We also had limited interaction with the girls since our job was to free them for activities, but we spent many hours with their children, getting to know them quite well. There were moments where we observed the girls, such as exiting the bus on arrival (a wide variety of expressions manifested themselves from fear to exuberance), delivering and picking-up babies, meal times, and free time when they had responsibility for their children. We often made ourselves available so they could, for example, go on the ropes course or zip line. Most rewarding was to see the effect of the camp on them: many hearts were softened toward God and a number of girls expressed a commitment to follow Jesus more closely in their lives.
Another thing that was amazing was to see the transformation of the camp from its conventional set-up (no small ones, just teenagers and staff) to a multi-nursery enterprise geared for child-care at its best and then back again. An army of high school and college staff descended on the nurseries and the stuff hauled in at the beginning of the week (an sea of strollers were positioned beside the cabins) and taken away on the last day to be stored for the next year. Young Life is an amazing group of people in amazing surroundings at camp and at home and God is using them in an amazing way to draw young (and old) folk into relationship with him. Pretty important stuff, in fact, I cannot think of anything more important: broken lives made whole for eternity.