The CKC Recipe
You don’t need to be here long to realize that there is something different about Camp. Kahdalea and Chosatonga have been around for a long time (60 years! Woohoo!) and the people who come here can vouch that it is life changing. There is a magic here that helps people to grow better into the best versions of themselves. But what is in that “magic” we serve up? Well, in this season of good food and feasting, with Thanksgiving just behind us and as Christmas comes near, we want to share our favorite family recipe for an incredible summer!
INGREDIENTS:
- Intentional Community
- Exciting Opportunities to Grow
- Time
- Faith
- Season generously with fun and friendships that can last a lifetime!
Before we get cookin’, let’s talk about these ingredients! Just like any other recipe, what goes in matters a lot to what will come out. For us, we use the highest quality ingredients; here is what we look for:
Intentional Community: In a community like ours, every person matters — parents, campers, and especially our staff. We look for encouraging parents who truly value a Christian atmosphere, the outdoors, FUN, and their child’s growth in independence and friendships. Most importantly for our day to day, though, we seek and find wonderful staff who are capable in their activities and, even more importantly, who are supportive, fun, and strive daily to encounter faith and grow more like Chist. With a support network of such great parents and counselors, this recipe is off to a great start!
Exciting Opportunities to Grow: Kids need a little adventure and challenge! When they respond to the heart’s call to set out “into the deep” they can learn that they are much more capable than they thought… At CKC, we offer the support, encouragement, and skills for them to choose their activities and to take their own steps forward in growth. Of course, you can’t get much more exciting than climbing, horseback riding, mountain biking, backpacking, canoeing, and kayaking! But whether is in these, or in our more subtle offerings, like Arts & Crafts and Marksmanship, the secret is that while they learn these exciting activities, the greatest growth campers experience is internal: they learn self-confidence, attention to detail, the joy of mastering a skill, and so many other virtues absorbed through their activity and through the role-modelling of the staff.
Time: This may be the hardest ingredient to find! With all our world’s supply issues, time is off the shelves everywhere! But we have a secret… unplug. It is what we do and we promise it works! Time just begins to appear and that undistracted and unplugged time is a key ingredient to our CKC Recipe because it really brings out the flavors in friendships and makes them pop. Add a peck of salt and you can’t go wrong! Just to acknowledge one common objection: when you unplug, you will face boredom. Just know, a little boredom is okay. A little boredom allows a space for questions, discussion, and it even induces creativity (and all of those are great things to have in your cupboard!).
Faith: This faith ingredient can be tricky. There are a lot of counterfeits on the supermarket shelves, but what we want has to be genuine. Each person has her/his own path to walk in encountering faith and Christ, but it is a journey that each of us, like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the Apostles, are called to take — sometimes reluctantly! Once “time” is in the pot and cooking, and “exciting opportunities to grow” has been added, we find that the addition of faith comes naturally to our recipe and gives it a supernatural depth of flavor. As campers first grow in wonder and then in gratitude, an encounter with faith often develops. And with the time to ask questions and to pray a little every day, as well as through the witness of our staff members, they are able to practice the final words of our camp prayer: “and so grow more like Christ.” Amen!
Season generously with fun and friendships that can last a lifetime!
Serve hot!
Feeds a dining hall!
