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 VOLUNTEERS FROM TRUMAN State University in Missouri help out at Camp Mt. Crags and Camp Gilmore in Calabasas, Calif. The students helped prepare the camp for the upcoming summer season. |
BY ELISABETH BUCHHOLTZ –
Two hundred and thirty college students from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, recently volunteered to come and work at Camp Mt. Crags and Camp Gilmore in Calabasas, Calif., during their spring break. The students traveled more than 1,800 miles in a charter bus and rented vans to start and complete 40 work projects at the camps.
The students are a part of CCF (Campus Christian Fellowship), a ministry at Truman State that has organized 11 volunteer service trips every year during spring break. CCF wanted to provide an opportunity for students to donate their time to camps that minister to inner city children. This year, Camp Mt. Crags and Camp Gilmore were chosen.
“This has been an incredible blessing to this camp. We are eternally grateful,” Camp Director Don Mowery commented. “Most of the projects they are working on are tasks that the staff would never had been able to prioritize and complete before camp started this summer.”
Mowery and his staff had hopes of building a nine-hole miniature golf course someday, but these students created and made the course in a week. The staff also wanted to have the names of each cabin painted on the doors. The students went beyond that request and painted colorful murals.
Other service projects included building shelves for storage rooms, recarpeting, clearing hiking trails, creating better accessibility to buildings, cleaning ponds, making a cement patio, building fences, clearing out brush and fashioning a picnic area.
Kristin, a junior, has volunteered for the second time. One of her projects included cleaning out and painting a large pantry with other students. With so many students, the workload was not too strenuous. Kristin had time to build relationships, spend time with God and enjoy nature.
Rain poured down the first few days. “The rain made our job extra challenging and difficult, but it forced us to work better together and find joy in the midst of our circumstances,” Megan Quigley, a senior, commented.
One would think that working out all the logistics for the students would be difficult. However, all Don and his staff had to do was give them enough work and provide a place to stay. The students even had their own kitchen crew that prepared every meal.
The trip organizers were Rob Siemer, a recent graduate, and Tim Hudson, a student intern for the project. This was Rob’s ninth year on the trip, and he said that Camp Mt. Crags and Camp Gilmore were the nicest camps he had been to.
The Army is grateful for the students and their desire to serve in a way that impacts inner city children.
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