~James 1:27
During our morning worship at PSR Camp we assign cabins to do prayer and scripture. According to tradition, boy cabins do the prayer and girl cabins read scripture.
As you can imagine, we get to hear lots of different things when we hand the microphone to a child and ask them to pray. Children's prayers are often so sincere and wonderfully simple. they just say what's on their mind and have a lot of "thank yous" and "please helps" which make us all smile.
I can remember a particular child during our first week of camp two seasons ago who was handed the microphone for prayer and had a very specific "please help" directed towards his parents. More specifically he said, "Dear Jesus, please help my parents to love me enough so they can stop doing bad things and me and my brother can come home..."
Isaac was in foster care along with his brother and they were both at camp that week. When I talked to his counselor, I heard the pieces of Isaac's story that he had shared with him.
Camp is such a blessing to these children, but not all of our parents agree on whether or not we should be serving foster children at summer camp. I won't pretend to be unbiased on the subject, but last year we had the opportunity to evaluate all of these opinions without county youth being at camp, and I wanted to take this opportunity to reassure any concerned parents.
Foster children who come to camp undergo pre-selection by the county of San Bernardino. This means that children who are dangerous, ill, or otherwise unqualified will never be at PSR Camp. Also, these children are so blessed by the camp experience that I would find it difficult to turn them away. I can remember almost all of their names, and they are often so enamored by how different camp is from their world. At summer camp you don't need to swear to fit in, fight anyone, or be suspicious of the adults (camp staff) that you don't know.
It really is a special place.
In James 1:27 it talks about widows (those who lost husbands) and orphans (those who lost parents), and these foster children have all lost something too. In the case of Isaac, the boy who said that heartfelt prayer above, he couldn't figure out why his parents wanted to do drugs more than they wanted him.
If you still have concerns, I really want to hear them. Even though I have a passion for this ministry we also take our responsibility to each family seriously because every camper deserves a great camp experience, but I hope you'll agree that PSR is the place where these children need to be.
Blessings!
~Jeremy
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