They have somewhere around 230 kids at Short Mountain this week. And about 70 counselors/staff. Every bed is full and the facilities are being used to the max. They actually have a waiting list for campers and staff. The unusual situation is that they have other weeks of camp which they only have 75 kids.
When church camps become overloaded and they have to start turning down kids, I see that as a major injustice. If at all possible you shouldn’t turn down kids for camp. Unfortunately the problem stems from trying to be nice to everyone. Kids graduate from high school and want to come back as counselors. No one wants to turn them down if they want to be a counselor. So you become overloaded with counselors who’s beds could be used for campers instead.
Instead you should only pick enough counselors that you need. And pick only enough of the good counselors. We’re talking good Bible school teachers; good encouragers; hard workers. I’m not saying that there are poor Bible school teachers; poor encouragers, and lazy people. It’s just that some are better than others.
Camp is about the kids; not some kind of pseudo reunion for counselors.
Yet, having a full camp is a good problem to have. It means you’re getting the most for your dollars. It also means the staff is doing a good job at retaining campers and/or attracting new ones. I wish we had the same problem at MJ’s camp. We are getting to have full facilities. However not all kids within the camp age bracket are attending camp. If they were, we’d have somewhere closer to 150 rather than the 80 that we have right now. I’m still pushing camp in my Bible class. But some kids seem unenthusiastic about it. I just about have to beg them to come to camp.

Spent the night at Short Mountain, helping them setup for camp. But there wasn’t that much setup time involved. Mostly it was helping Darrell setup the sound system and sitting in a meeting. During that meeting I did realize that this camp is perhaps one of the more conservative camps around.
Short Mountain has some slight improvements. The boy’s bathhouse has been redone, ever so slightly. Looks much better. However they did put in some kitchen sinks instead of the regular old bathroom sinks. I still can’t understand how all the boys share just 3 bathroom sinks. Could it be that they just don’t wash their hands?
And they spent some money on hunter green paint on the cabins and other buildings. Looks reasonable. The girls’ cabins have log siding placed on them.
Basically the guys’ staff cabin is a college dorm room in a shack. Josh has his computer setup in the staff cabin. Looks kinda out of place in the heap of junk. They use it to watch DVDs on a big screen tv.
Tracy spends an awful amount of time shifting around campers in cabins to make sure everyone is with their friend. She uses the excuse of trying to make everyone happy. I remember when I had the dream of trying to make everyone happy. It just can’t be done. Camp is a time for making new friends. Is it really that difficult to spend 5 days without being in the same cabin with your best friend? My solution is to put all of the same age into the same cabin. Makes it a whole lot easier. Otherwise you have the headache of shifting people around in order to accommodate everyone.
I did come back for church at Mt. Juliet. I would have rather stayed on the mountain and worshiped up there. But there was no guarantee of me getting a ride back to Mt. Juliet. So rather be safe than sorry, I rode back with Darrell and Tracy to MJ. Darrell wanted me to go to church with him, but I figured I’d better go to Mt. Juliet before people get upset at me again.