Philosophy

What Matters to Us

Our most precious treasures are our children.  Giving them a rich and fulfilling childhood is so very important and intrinsic to their health and well-being. Children need time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life as well as time to play, dream, and to explore.  They need time for sitting under the stars, long walks with special friends, exciting challenges that call them forth to grow and to discover, and time to be children. Unique pressures face today’s youth. In their often fast-paced and complicated world, sometimes important ingredients for a wholesome childhood are not fully realized.

To clarify our mission as a camp family, we share these guiding core values that better show who we are and what we’re aiming for:

Welcome Adventure

Be the One

We are a Family

Choose the Hard Right

Encounter Faith

We communicate these core values in EVERY one of our staff interviews regardless of which department we are hiring for.  In our camp family, through prayer, community, and fun, challenging activity, we cultivate a willingness to help others at some cost to self and the ability to endure discomfort for the sake of a higher aim.  In our case, the higher aim is our mission.  Our mission is to plant seeds in the hearts of campers and staff that will help them grow towards a thriving and whole-hearted adulthood.

Here your child will be part of a special camp family. Careful teaching of new challenging disciplines and skills help to enhance a child’s self esteem while broadening his or her horizons. In this happy setting, with a host of new friends and opportunities, we’ll encourage your child to laugh and play and live life to the fullest.  Whether in arts & crafts, riding, and field sports or in rock climbing, mountain biking, whitewater paddling, caving, and backpacking, our campers start at a beginning level and can advance according to their ability and desire.  The growth a child experiences is amazing.  They realize that they are much more capable than they ever realized.  They are “unplugged” in a wonderful community with great fun, appreciation and challenge.  This is such an advantage over their peers.  The growth a child finds is not often available in a school setting.  Our desire and our commitment to your child is the same as for our own: to create a place where they can grow physically, spiritually, and emotionally within a consistent framework of Christian ideals.  Please allow us the privilege of including your child in our camp family.

Camps Kahdalea and Chosatonga are owned by the Trufant Family.  We consider ourselves a traditional North Carolina mountain summer camp with Christian ideals and we are serious about our ideals.  We invite staff with a deep devotion to God and we ask that they live it out on a day to day basis.  We ask our staff to “put their faith on the table” and if the campers wish to pick it up they may.

Kahdalea and Chosatonga are Christian camps that foster adventure, friendship, and faith. Since our founding in 1963, we have provided programs that positively challenge and inspire young men and women as well as opportunities for worship that develop a rich, personal faith through reflection and strong role models.  We are a prayerful community in which there are many denominations of Christianity represented, as well as fellow seekers who are searching for a positive community rooted in beauty, goodness, and truth. We profess a view of the human person concordant with traditional Christianity and the Catholic faith, and we are dedicated to finding common ground among all Christian denominations where possible.