Staff week at camp

Hello again,
As I said before, I think that posts this summer will be a little more sporadic than I would like them to be. I have found out that I do have internet access at the boy scout camp, but I am going to be very busy… I will post as I can.

So since my last post I went to Stevens Point for Pentecost weekend. I helped out at the Masses at Newman Parish and really enjoyed them, as always. I went out to eat couple of times with Father Tom, it was nice to catch up with just him. On Saturday evening there was an Ordination Mass to the deaconate for one of the guys from the La Crosse Diocese. He will be ordained a priest next year. There was going to be an Ordination for another guy on Sunday, but I couldn’t go to that, as the time conflicted with the Mass at Newman.

This deacon Ordination is the same Ordination as for a guy who is going to stay a Deacon, but since this one is going to be a priest, he is called a transitional deacon by those who know him. This doesn’t change any of his faculties or authorities. It is just a term used to clarify incase people are curious. Dan, the new Deacon at the Ordination I went to and Dave, the one for the Ordination that I didn’t go to are great guys. They will both be great priests.

After the Sunday Mass I helped a bit with changing the decorations in the church from the Easter Season to Ordinary Time. Ordinary time isn’t about the boring type of ordinary, but means ordinal, such as a number sequence… just a way of keeping track as to where we are in the liturgical year. I had to leave before this change over was complete… I had to head to the camp for staff week.

When I arrived at camp I checked in and moved the supplies that they had down to the chapel to begin preparing for the summer. I have a nice outdoor chapel to use. I really like it. I found out that they did indeed want chapel services during the staff week, I hadn’t been expecting that, so I raced to put some of them together.

The staff at camp is great. I really like everyone that I have gotten to know over the week. They all seem happy to have a chaplain there, and attendance for the chapel services has been great. I spent a lot of the week figuring out what I was going to be doing, and writing the chapel services. It was a bit difficult with the services because the music books they have are not good. I struggled with them for Monday’s chapel service, but then decided to make up some handout sheets for music. I got this done and it was nice, but it turns out that the people there only knew some of the songs. I had downloaded some music to my IPod to play along, but for the speakers I need power, there is an outlet in the chapel, but it doesn’t work. I am going to use an extension cord so that I can do this in the future, also one of the guys on staff has a portable keyboard and plays piano for his church at home so he volunteered to help out.

The leadership at the camp is great about the importance of chapel. For example, even though it was staff week and heavy on training, if there was an announcement to be made about something for the rest of the afternoon, the programs director would say to the people to meet out at the entrance to the chapel, not make an announcement in the chapel, since that isn’t what it is for. I had mentioned in passing to someone how much I enjoy rappelling and the programs director said that if I want to help out occasionally with the rappelling program I can, but that it is up to me, so that I can function fully as chaplain.

We worked hard this week setting everything up too. I enjoyed the good physical work and pitching in when I could. It was wonderful of the camp leadership to allow me to decide if I wanted to and not do stuff at the expense of the chaplaincy.

I am looking forward to the scouts coming in next week, and spending this summer doing this ministry.

Peace,
Adam