Summer camp is just a week away!

Summer camp is just a week away! For the past week all of our counselors and leadership staff have been at camp training and preparing for the summer. Dan Mayer, Luke Koskinen, Katelyn Olszak, and Phil Lyons have been leading the training and imparting their wisdom through training sessions, stories, and talks call “Counselor Essentials”.

During counselor training, they cover a wide range of topics from how to effectively share the gospel through your personal story to how to safely paddle a canoe. Whatever challenges these counselors are going to face this summer they will be ready!

Many of our new counselors this year were once campers themselves. They were greatly impacted by their counselors and are excited for the opportunity to serve at camp and  to share their love for Jesus with their own campers!

Jack Hanlon (once a camper and HSMT’er), when asked what counselor impacted him the most said, “Luke Swanson impacted my life the most because he was the counselor that helped me commit my life to Christ... I would love to be the same thing he was for me to other campers.”

Sarah Klos (camper for many years and first year on staff) commented that the biggest impact for her during training was the “the counselor essential talks”. Specifically, the methods Luke and Phil use to take everyday objects and put them into lessons and illustrations that we can remember and use while we are counseling.

Not all of our staff have been to Phantom Ranch before. We love when new people come to camp and serve with us! Cameron is one of our staff members who is completely new to Phantom Ranch. He said that his first impression of camp is “A loving staff and great camp.” He also said that during training he was most influenced by “The Godly perspective to being a counselor and providing the role model aspect to the kids that you counsel.”

We are also preparing spiritually for this summer. Today all the staff at camp participated in a fast. During which, the staff have been praying for the summer as well as spending time reading God’s word. We want to dedicate this summer and all the work that we do to the Lord. Fasting gives us time to rest, meditate on scripture, pray and focus our attention on Him. Also, it will help remind us of the importance of spending time with the Lord and how important it is to look to Him for our strength and endurance.

Summer at Phantom Ranch is fun, intense, exciting, exhausting, and challenging. We greatly appreciate and desire your prayers! Please pray for our summer staff as they are about to start summer 2014. We are very thankful for them and all the hard work that they will do this summer.

Darren and Luke teaching counselors how to play Disk Golf. 

Life Guard Training! 

Learning how to make crafts!