By: Darleen Kittrick

Greetings fellow Camp Gray Fans!!! This is Darleen coming at you from the Beautiful (…and now somewhat chilly) Camp Gray. I am new to camp and just realized it has been exactly two months since I’ve started here at Camp Gray. It has been so GREAT!!! I keep feeling more and more blessed each day that I am here, which I am sure most (if not all) of you know exactly what I am talking about.

So you’re asking yourself “Self, I wonder what’s going on at Camp Gray?” Well luckily that’s just what I’m going to do, fill you in on some recent happenings at camp. This past weekend we had our first Confirmation retreat of the season!  Personally I have been looking forward to this for sometime.  I know I shouldn’t have a favorite Sacrament but Confirmation is so AWESOME I just can’t help it.  With this parish’s confirmation class that was here, we kept with our theme of “To the Heights” (inspired by blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati).  This was not very difficult to incorporate because while learning more about our faith and the Church, we are readying ourselves not only for Confirmation but for Heaven (our ultimate goal) as well. The Holy Spirit was a big contributor of this weekend.  In all the staff talks it was so cool to see the high school students captivated by the lessons and stories told.  Throughout the weekend something that the students were able to rally behind was the word efficacious.  It could be said that this word is a ten cent word but I would say it’s more like a ten dollar word.  Efficacious means it has the ability to CHANGE your SOUL.  We use this word to explain all the sacraments, especially Confirmation, and prayer.  Let’s break this down, by going to mass and celebrating the Eucharist, being engaged in the Sacraments, and/or experiencing prayerful moments (of any kind) our soul can be changed!  Whoa!!!  That’s so crazy powerful!!  This means that through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit our souls can be penetrated and changed in a great way.

While prepping to be confirmed, we challenged these students to dive deep and push themselves to figure out what it truly means to become more completely sealed with the Holy Spirit.  There were a few moments this weekend that I realized how truly important it is to be prepared for what is to come in our future.  For instance, around camp here we are not only prepping for winter, but in fact we are also preparing for Summer at the very same time. This sounds super bizarre but in fact it is happening.  So we have been winterizing Camp Gray (and by “we” I mostly mean Tom.)  But we also have our gaze fixed upon SUMMER CAMP!!!!!  I unfortunately have not experienced summer camp yet, but I keep hearing so much about it!  It sounds like it’s way cool!   One major way that we are getting ready for the upcoming summer is collecting funds for our new pool.  That’s right folks I said it; NEW POOL!!  Scream it from the roof tops.  It’s quite the buzz around Camp but we are still just in the very first steps, which is only the collecting funds part.  So I encourage you all if you feel called to support us in this endeavor to do so.  There are a few ways you can show your support.  #1 Make a donation if you can. #2 Pass along this info to others.  #3 Keep us in your prayers here at Camp Gray as we prepare to have a great winter season (that’s nice and toasty) and an absolutely fantastic, wonderful and terrific Summer Camp (with an awesome new pool)!

Thanks everyone!