St. Peter’s Church in Essex Fells and St. Elizabeth’s Church in Ridgewood combined youth groups and departed for a mission trip on Saturday, June 9 and returned the following Saturday.
The group teamed up with the organization City Camp, a program based in inner-city northern Philadelphia that provides children of working parents a summer camp/day care for nearly nine hours a day. The camp takes place on a church ground that has been reinvented into St. James’ School. The camp supports children from age five through 12.
The group was divided into smaller divisions and was assigned tasks for the week. While some of the youth did service projects around the church site others were in charge of either a group of campers or leading an activity for the campers.
The youth groups slept on the church site in four large 10-person tents and passed time by playing card games and volley ball. Each morning the youth groups would wake at 7:00 a.m. and eat breakfast and then report to morning prayer led by Camp Director Andrew Kellner.
By the time prayers were finished, the campers had already arrived and the youth groups would assume their assigned role. The campers would eat breakfast and lunch, go to chapel and participate in a variety of activities such as team sports, ceramics and art and crafts.
City Camp provides a two-hour reading period for the campers in which they were asked to practice their reading or in some cases learn the alphabet. Lack of proper education plagues the area and City Camp actively combats this problem with an assortment of books for readers on all levels.
The youth groups worked very hard during the week in order to serve God in any way that they could. Incoming college freshman Jaime Summers of St. Peter’s said, “The experience was different from my previous mission trips, but being able to make a difference in a new kind of way truly made me feel closer to God. It was frustrating because we weren’t able to visually see the changes we made, however, it felt as though helping to change these kids’ lives was more rewarding than painting a house.”
