Youth Peace Travel Team – Inspiration Hills Camp

IMG_7999Cicadas! Cicadas! Cicadas! Oh my! This past week the team had the joy to be amidst senior high campers at Inspiration Hills in Ohio. We quickly learned that this was “the summer of the cicadas.” Their deafening buzz, hum, or screech, as some would describe it, left us wondering if we would run into anymore cicadas before their time passes (around July 4th) until the next cica
da summer in seventeen years. With this fascination of cicadas, we would like to share some interesting facts about this peculiar creature.IMG_7352

1. Cicadas will land on you if you are using lawn equipment because they will think you are also a cicada.
2. Cicadas have five eyes.
3. People eat them… but the peace team was not that adventurous.
4. Cicadas pee and it’s called cicada sap. We probably got hit by it and didn’t even notice.
5. You can find other facts at this website dedicated to cicadas. http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/the-most-interesting-17-year-cicada-facts/

What a way to start the summer! From building a cabin, to swimming out to the dock, to singing songs of praise, our week at Inspiration Hills brought us closer together as a team and to those that call this camp their home. I greatly appreciated the willingness of all campers and counselors to learn and participate as we ran our workshops for the first time. It was particularly heartwarming to hear that many used the word “safe” to describe their feelings after a challenging activity dealing with interpersonal conflict resolution. Participating together in conversations about how we each choose to live out our peace witness daily was also particularly powerful as a diversity of opinions were able to be expressed in this safe space. We all left the week with many new friends, things to ponder, and stomachs full of excellent campfire biscuits and popcorn!

Peace,
Sara

What’s up my Shalom-makers? We just wrapped up our first week of camp, and it was AWESOME. The staff and the campers were so welcoming and engaged in learning more about peacemaking. It was great to hear them all participate in discussion and activities, and it was also fun for us to hang out with them for camp activities! Some of my favorite parts were hanging out on the dock in the lake, making kettle corn in a massive cast iron bowl over the fire, helping construct a cabin (that wasn’t part of the original plan, but it was fun!), Coffee House night, worship in The Crater™, and eating peach cobbler. I’m going to miss the counselors, staff, and campers at Inspiration Hills, but I’m so hyped for Mardela and my first ride on an airplane! I definitely won’t be missing the cicadas, though. 17 years isn’t long enough.

Peace out,
Phoebe Hart

Hello and good tidings!! Our week was filled with resurrecting a cabin, songs, and water games. That’s only a few of the fun things we did this past week. If you would like to follow up with the rest of our activities, you are welcome to ask the thousands of cicadas that accompanied our journey. A specific highlight for me was the feeling of running our workshops for the first team. It has been an honor to put in so much hard work with the three team members that stand beside me. I personally was pretty nervous, but the willingness to participate from the staff and campers at Inspiration Hills and the support of my team mates has filled me with a confidence of joy and love. I look forward to moving on with this joy but will miss the friends I have made along the way. But another friend worth knowing is down the road!

Blessings, Kiana

Hello my good friends! I am so excited that our summer at camps is underway! This week was full of inspiring moments, seeing campers new to the camping open up and step out of their comfort zone, witnessing counselors new to counseling take campers under their wing and be excellent role models to the campers, and experiencing everyone feel safe about their beliefs in an exercise that forced participants to be vulnerable and share their opinions. On another note, it was nifty to see how camp dynamics changed throughout the week as counselors and campers became more comfortable with each other and interacted more and more. With such a small group, everyone was pretty close by the end of the week. My highlights were making popcorn over a fire and swimming in the lake.

Peace, Love, Mermaids and Mermans
Jenna