Having Camps During a Pandemic By Trip McGill
come and gone, as I reflect on all of our planning, organizing and execution of every part of camp, I am reminded of the old Steven Curtis Chapman song, My Redeemer is Faithful and True. God truly carried us all the way and He truly helped us in our lack of understanding and gave us the grace we needed to see things through. God blessed each of us through this journey. Our staff, counselors in training (CITs) spending twenty-four hours a
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day with their cabin groups. Add to this task of time, expecting young children to keep their masks on, physical distance and somehow bring everyone together to love one another it was indeed challenging. Even though they hated wearing a mask, and they didn’t like staying apart at a distance, they still did it! First, we had Bonclarken Music Drama Camp the week of July 4th. During this week, our counselors helped our
campers learn an entire musical, Go, Go Jonah, (yes, mostly without singing), and each learned their respective parts of speaking and some solos. We had proper recreation, boating, meals outside and a final musical presentation without an audience. We could have camp, but again, no meetings of more than 10 people inside, so the parents were not allowed on campus to see the final presentation. Each family purchased the DVD of the presentation and enjoyed viewing it with their families at home.
Next was Camp Bonclarken! We usually have two ses-
sions of Camp Bonclarken each summer. This summer we planned for four sessions. We were able to make it through two full sessions and half of the third session before we made the decision to close due to two of our campers test- ing positive for COVID. It was heartbreaking to have to tell our campers that their parents would pick them up the next morning, mid-week, but once again our campers were great and our staff, counselors and CITs rose to the occa- sion to help close camp early and with much grace. Our theme at Camp Bonclarken was Rooted in Christ.
We had lessons, worship, campfires, cabin devotions based on our theme. We had our campers in cabin groups all week with assigned activities, which many deemed the “best week of camp ever!” Most of our NC Overnight Camp guidelines in-
cluded every camper staying in their cabin group all of the time with their cabin counselor and cabin CIT. These were called “households.” Each house- hold belonged to a “neighborhood” consisting of six households. Each week of camp, we had 18 neigh- borhoods. We had THREE consecutive nightly bonfires to have smaller groups. Our camp pastors (Clint Davis, Kyle Sims and Garison Taylor) were transported by golf cart by Lynn Grimsley from one bonfire to another. We ate in the dining hall at Bonclarken in split meals (two different shifts). Each table for campers, CITs and Staff were assigned and all of us sat at our assigned table each meal all week
28 The Associate Reformed Presbyterian
ever in a million years did I believe we would have to execute the types of procedures, rules, expectations and guidelines that we needed to pull off a successful season of Bonclarken Camps! Several weeks later, we fully believed that we would be trying to conduct camps via some sort of digital format. Now that this season has
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