First week with scouts

Hello again,
Wow, I thought that the life at seminary required long days. It turns out that when I am there I am getting a lot of down time compared to what I am doing as a scout camp chaplain.

This was the first week with scouts in camp. It was amazing both how fast it seemed and how long it seemed. After staff week I got off fairly early on Friday evening and when I got to my mom’s house my aunt and uncle were in town. We had supper and talked late into the evening. On Saturday we went to an overlook in Winona so they could see the city from above. It was nice, and since it was steamboat days, the festival in Winona, there was a lot to see. In the afternoon we drove to Wabasha to go to the National Eagle Center. We sat in on one of their one hour class sessions. I had heard pretty much all of the information presented, but it was nice to have it presented in a condensed, organized fashion. We followed that up by going to a restaurant in the country near Nelson, WI that may aunt had read about in the magazine. That was nice and we finished off the day by again chatting into the evening.

On Sunday I went to Mass in Holmen before heading out to the camp. When I got to camp I had a few things to set up and get ready since the scouts were coming in soon. We were required to be there by 1230 and I was quite early to get stuff done. When the troops were starting to register I was asking the leaders if they knew the faiths that their scouts practiced. All of the scouts were Christian as far as I could find out, but I decided to still run the services as interfaith, rather than ecumenical incase the leaders had missed one or two. I did feel confident to go a bit heavier on Christian than even I had planned.

I found out Sunday evening that one of the troops had scheduled the priest from the parish that most of them attended to come in for Mass on Wednesday. This frustrated me to an extent because I had spent a bit of time scheduling a different priest in, and this troop hadn’t let me know in advance. So I had to end up calling and canceling the priest that had been scheduled in by me, somewhat embarrassing me, but he was fine with it.

I was alerted to a few scouts that the leaders were concerned would be homesick during the week. I made it a point to be a bit extra attentive to those scouts so that I had been with them if I had to start dealing with home sickness problems. I had a little bit with each of them, but they weren’t any too bad. On Monday and Tuesday I was able to quickly schedule in the Catholic Priest for next week, but had a bear of a time scheduling a protestant minister for the Wednesday. I think I called 20-25 churches before getting one. It would come on Friday that he ended up canceling so I called another 10-12 before getting one that I think will show up.

Monday and Tuesday were my busiest days for homesick scouts. Each of them is so different that I have to figure out a way to distract them and try to keep them in camp. Probably the third scout that I had dealings with I spent a lot of time with. Everything that I did to distract him he had fun with, but when I would mention him doing it again later in the week he would say, “No, I’m going home today.” I was pretty frustrated with myself for not being able to convince him, it was so hard headed though, that on Tuesday his leaders agreed to let him go home. He is the only scout that I wasn’t able to convince to stay, so I think I did pretty well.

As for my chapel services… I’m not as happy with them as the scouts and leaders are. I am planning on writing one or two more and then just editing as the summer goes on. This will also give me quite a bit more time to spend with the scouts. The hours I am putting in amaze me. On Sunday I was with scouts and leaders until 10:30 when we had a staff meeting. Then I get up at 5:30 in the morning. Monday was a 21 hour day and Tuesday was 20. Wednesday I had some homesickness issues in the morning but by the afternoon it slowed down so Wednesday and Thursday were only about 15-18 hour days and Friday I was leaving camp by a little after 9 p.m. It was very nice to go to my moms and climb into a real bed before 10:30 at night.

However, shortly after I climbed into bed I heard one of my step-brothers and a group of his friends come in and they were hanging out. I was so exhausted that I didn’t come out and see them. I dozed and woke up quite a bit until they went to bed about 3:30 am. I managed to sleep until 7:00 so I am good and with one more night’s sleep I will be ready to go for another week with scouts.

Thanks for reading.
Peace,
Adam