August 19, 2009
Camp works for the greater good
Anyone who has been to the mountain may understand the desire to stay. For some, this may be a reality, but for others, spending time in the higher reaches is a small window that in the long run may earn strength of character and spirit for the long road back home.“This is the hardest work I’ve ever done,” said Fernando Barrientos on Tuesday.
Barrientos is a camper at the Skyview Ranch. He is one of more than 20 spending time in Teton Valley having traveled the Midwest from inner city Chicago. Barrientos, like many of the other campers, finds the service work, like most chores, laborious. As iron sharpen iron, it is not the tangible work that will sharpen Barrientos and others, but in the fi reside chats, the moments in-between the swimming and the touring, that will ultimately set an example and lend to intangible growth.
“This will help me when I go back home and I’m helping my mom and my sisters,” Victor Williams said on Tuesday.
Williams, a camper and junior counselor for the group along with other campers were helping Extension Offi cer Ben Eborn tear down and clean up the fair grounds after last week’s festivities. There were tents to take down, stakes to pull up and picnic tables to put away. “I was a little nervous to come 1,000 miles from home, but I’ve forgotten about Chicago for a while.”
The Skyview Ranch has been hosting campers from the inner city Chicago for the last three years.
The program is supported through the Inner City Youth Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has worked to support and encourage urban youth in the metropolitan Chicago area for over a decade, through mentoring, summer camp experiences, and exposure to higher education opportunities. The foundation partners with Brigham Young University- Idaho and the LDS Charitable Foundation.
Foundation Board President David Beer said the program took advantage of what Teton Valley had to offer to the campers after a visit to the valley.
“We saw the possibilities,” Beers said of Teton Valley’s location. “We decided to try it and the kids we’re just thrilled.”
The Foundation pays to fly the students west as well as the transportation while they are visiting and the LDS Charities provide meals. Lodging at the Skyview Ranch is donated through its owner Dick Jacobson.
Teton Valley native and BYU-I senior Travis Hall is a fi rst year counselor with the camp. He is working with a handful of other BYU-I students earning an extended education in the field with the notion that the more they give, the more they receive from these campers.
“I learn a lot from these experiences and it helps me as a person,” Hall said.
This year the theme is “No Fear” based on the Old Testament’s Isaiah 41:10, which begins, “Do not fear, for I am with you.”
The staff counselors pay into the program to serve the students through the 10-day experience that takes them from Jackson to Green Canyon and all points in-between. For many of the campers, this is not their fi rst western rodeo with many returning year after year to continue to build on the camp’s core values of respect, honesty and hard work.
“It’s a lot of work,” said Williams. “But I want to return the favor,” he adds of working as a junior counselor in a leadership roll with the other campers.
Others echo William’s sentiments. This is Reggie Radford’s fi fth year as a camper with the program. Aside from the good food and the trips to the swimming pool in Jackson, Radford feeds off the example of other campers and counselors taking away a renewed understanding of responsibility and respect.
Veteran camper Kevin Offett said he enjoys the trips to Yellowstone, but above all looks forward to fireside conversations that happen every evening.
“We share our testimony every night,” Offett said. “The last night is the most special because everyone’s spirit has grown so much.”
