I recently had the honor of attending a junior high/senior high camp at the Big Spruce Campground in Cedaredge, Colorado, USA. We gathered youth from Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming for a week of exploration and sacred community. It was incredible!
These camper reflections were edited lightly for clarity and length.
Anastycia Newell-Fosdick
I had the amazing opportunity to experience a senior/junior high camp at Big Spruce Campground. The community at Big Spruce started the first day. Everyone was nervous meeting these new people from other states, but we just started talking to each other. I haven’t experienced this on the first day at any other camps I’ve been to, so it was exciting.
Everyone is here for different reasons, but we all have a belief in Christ. This camp helped remind me that the community with Christ exists within the Community of Christ. We learned, we played, we had a good time, but most importantly we were together. I got to see so many amazing sights that really showed me how beautiful Colorado is and how spectacular God’s creations are.
Madison McAdams
What inspired, encouraged, and taught me the most from camp was the community and nature. Meeting the people from many different states, you get to experience a lot of different individuals and communities that have the chance to come together in one big, unified circle that you wouldn’t be able to experience otherwise.
When you are surrounded by the trees, birds, and the breeze you can clearly hear God’s voice and feel God’s breath in everything. The theme for this camp was “Rooted and Reaching,” referring to a tree that stretches out its branches and leaves. We learned about many different world religions and how we can pursue peace without losing our center.
When you are surrounded by the trees, birds, and the breeze you can clearly hear God's voice and feel God's breath in everything.
At first we questioned the idea of our religion sharing history with other religions, but those questions made us think and begin to understand things on a deeper level. From the Indigenous Peoples’ views of nature living as a holy and sacred being, to the Buddhist sand mandalas that contain the prayers of the monks who create them, the Quran’s idea of equality for everyone, and Christians and many other religions’ idea to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Each of these virtues shows through all our religions, and…we all yearn for peace and community.
Noah Terauchi
This was my first time going out of state for a church camp. I was a bit wary about visiting, although I heard great things from some friends who had been there.
One of the first things I noticed was the beauty of the area. The mountain ranges surrounding the camp and all the wildlife blew me away. I really loved playing sand volleyball during sunset because it felt so calming.
Throughout the week, I was able to connect with other campers and learn about other ways of life. There was one theme that stood out to me that I will carry for years to come: creating peace through the understanding of other people, beliefs, and traditions.
I believe it is important to be open to ways of life and to challenge your own beliefs to grow. Big Spruce was able to facilitate an engaging discussion where we could share our personal experiences and beliefs while being and feeling respected at the same time.
I’ve gotten to know quite a few of the California campers through the Calizonia (church delegation) national park trips. Getting to see them again was very nice. I also enjoyed being with the Colorado and New Mexico campers. As we aren’t in the same delegation, the only times we meet are at summer camps like this or at Spectacular.
Sam Cole
I’ve been attending junior/senior high camp for four years. It is honestly the highlight of my summer. The amount of love and commitment that is showed to you as an individual is overwhelmingly amazing.
The comfort it brings when you step out of your car after a two-, six-, or even ten-hour drive and smell the blue spruce trees and hear the birds chirping in the breeze. The warm hugs you get when you see your counselors and friends that you only see once or twice a year.
Your youth is the—or one of the—most memorable and cherished times of your life, and going to camp, will add a million memories to it.
The relationships created throughout this short week were ones that will last a lifetime. Not only do the relationships last a lifetime, but the things you experience do, too. This year, we visited the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose, Colorado, the Ouray hot springs in Ouray, Colorado, and the Colorado National Monument in Grand Junction, Colorado, all in just one week. It was a blast and created mental images that will live in my mind forever.
I could go on and on about the memories of camp, but I’ll leave with this. Your youth is the—or one of the—most memorable and cherished times of your life, and going to camp, will add a million memories to it.
Kiylee Talley-Moreno
This summer I went to a junior high/senior high camp at the Big Spruce campground. This experience was wonderful and filled with lots of fun opportunities and experiences. Some of them included going on a hike in Devils Kitchen, going to a hot spring, and visiting a Native American museum, more accurately the Ute.
We also took time out of each part of our day to learn about and recognize and appreciate other religions and cultures. This allowed us to know more about people and their hardships, struggles, spiritual differences, and cultural differences. I think this experience was so important, especially for people who may not know a lot of things about other religions.
The religions we learned about include Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Baha’i, Native spirituality. Some words that we came up with in one of our wrap-up classes for each religion include: Judaism: covenant, faithfulness, sacred story. Islam: prayer, devotion, charity, submission to God. Buddhism: compassion, suffering, discipline, enlightenment, peace. Baha’i: unity, peace, oneness of humanity. I-Kuan Dao: spiritual longing, reverence, moral cultivation.
But aside from the religious aspects of this experience, there was so much joy and laughter with campfire, super fun time classes, night and day volleyball, and spending time with a community of people who are so fun.
Now I will give a short summary of what we talked about for each religion:
For Judaism, we talked about how in Christianity, we have a lot of commonalities with Jewish teachings and how a lot of times people who judge Jewish fathers are also judging so many other religions because a lot of different faiths come from Judaism.
For Islam, we learned about how the Islamic faith has its five pillars of faith. These include pilgrimage, and this is the ritual to Mecca once in a lifetime. Fasting, where every year for a whole month they don’t eat during the time of day only when the sun is up. Almsgiving, where you give 2.5 percent of your wealth to the poor and needy. Prayer, where they pray five times a day depending on where the sun is at. And declaration of faith is the core belief that there is one true god named Allah.
Buddhism: Being a Buddhist is a very peaceful religion, and they focus on not making things suffer and choosing the kind way of doing things.
Baha’i, the core beliefs are the unity of mankind and that everyone is equal and are all one big family.
Native spirituality is the practice of protecting nature and having an Earth-centered belief system.
But aside from the religious aspects of this experience, there was so much joy and laughter with campfire, super fun time classes, night and day volleyball, and spending time with a community of people who are so fun. This experience was so fun and exciting.