Portable Safe Space
By Mattie Felker O
ne of the classes I am taking this semester is a 3D art class. Our latest project that was tasked to us was to create a “portable safe space”. Everyone
has at least one place that makes them feel safe and happy and my professor wanted us to recreate this space in a way that could be carried around with us. I immediately knew what place I wanted to recreate: Bonclarken. Bonclarken has been a place of pure joy and safety for me for as long as I can remember. To recreate Bonclarken in a portable way I chose to focus
on a backpack. Anyone who goes to Bonclarken, whether it is to work, attend camp, or anything else will tell you they would be lost without a back pack of some sort to hold all the things. In the large pocket of this back pack I attempted to recre-
ate something that resembled the Youth Activity Building (YAB). I created a spacious area with seating and ambient lighting, complete with Matthew 18:20 (a verse that always reminds me of Bonclarken) hanging on the wall. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” The YAB has always held a special part of my heart as it is
where I gave my life to Christ at 13 and is where I’ve felt the presence of The Lord more times than I can count. In the rest of the pockets I placed material things that symbolize camp to me: bandaids, bug spray, name tags, wa- ter bottles, a camp t-shirt, some loops and laces, etc, etc. All these items are things my campers and I would be lost with- out at camp and are symbols of moments outside of worship where we get to connect with our kids on a personal level. While presenting this project to my class/professor in a
video I played two special songs: “Good Good Father” by Chris Tomlin and “The Mountain” by Steven Curtis Chap- man. I explained to my classmates the memories I have of these two songs specifically at camp and how they will always remind me of that special place. This project has brought me joy during this stressful time?
Mattie Felker is a freshman at Appalachian State University and is a member of Centennial ARP in Columbia, SC. She has been a counselor at Bonclarken for several years and has attended many Bonclarken camps since Elementary School.
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Teen Testimony
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