Final Blog

It has been interesting reading about everyone finishing up their internships and moving on with their careers or educations in one way or another. But it's a weird feeling because I am no where near done with my internship. Today I was busy as ever running around camp as I worked the wall, pulled rocks and did trail work on our new obstacle course, built relationships with volunteers, and of course got very very tired. I was glad that I got the opportunity to be a part of this very large workday, because on Thursday I strained the entire right side of my back and was not able to even twist my torso in any direction. However, I somehow became very blessed and fortune to have my back relax on Friday afternoon so that I was able to work hard that afternoon moving tires for our obstacle course and dealing with various deliveries that we received that day. It was a great experience for me because one of my strengths is I'm an Achiever and therefore I need to accomplish things in a day in order to feel like I did something with my day. This internship has been an awesome learning experience and it continues to reinforce the passion that I have for camp ministry. I really hope that I am able to continue in this field and at this camp in the future after my internship. Good luck to everyone as they either graduate or move forward with what they are passionate about.

The Pursuit of a Career

Lately, I have been asked through various internship assignments and by co-workers and family members if "I will continue in this area of recreation and tourism." I have very quickly replied, "YES!" Although this job is very time consuming and strenuous with working in a service oriented field, with a limited staff, with long hours, a ministry with spiritual aspects, and also very low pay, it is something that I absolutely have the most joy in doing because our summer months of ministry make it all worth it. As most people's internships come to a close, mine is really just beginning. I have spent the last 4 months planning what I will be doing in the next 4 months when all of that planning gets put to the test and rolls into action. This is the time where I will be tested the most physically, emotionally, and spiritually which will affect my performance level a great deal. Now, the problem that I am facing is the uncertainty of whether I will have a job with this organization after the internship or not. Although I really want to work with this organization full-time in the future, there is always that uncertainty especially considering our tough economic times. I have realized that these next four months will be the time for me to prove my worth to the organization and how much of an asset I can be to its growth. I am hoping that my transition to a career is smooth and that I do not have to search one out, but that is why I need to constantly make efforts to obtain the career that I most desire.

Outdoors 40+

As summer camp continues to approach, only 35 days left, everything continues to get even faster paced as we get projects completed so that we can be prepared for our peak time of year. It has been an awesome experience lately as we complete these various projects and watch our massive To-Do List slowly disappear and we can truly see how much we are getting done. I have really enjoyed the last few weeks because they have allowed me to get outside completing projects which is an environment that I am able to thrive in and make an impact. It is totally different now working outside and the types of tasks that we are doing compared to a few months ago where we were basically confined inside the office as we corresponded with various churches, staff, new staff, suppliers, and volunteers. Most of the projects that we have been working on are focused on the various recreation elements that we use during our summer camps. Although these recreation activities are primarily geared toward our youth visitors, they are also emphasized as a way for our youth leaders to be involved with their students and create an environment where they can bond with their students. One of the projects that we are working on completing is building a couple of clubhouses which can be used by our leaders as they take their students out to do a sleep out one night during the week. Building these clubhouses creates a new experience for our students and leaders because they can be away from all of the other campers and just enjoy a night together as a small group. Recreation is such a vital part to our programmed camps and is essential for creating a fun environment for our youth and adults. Therefore, we must be able to willingly involve our guests of all ages so that they can have a fun experience which will promote some of the other spiritual elements of the week and will allow for greater focus during those times.

Humility

This past weekend was very exciting yet filled with challenges at the same time. The tasks that I had to perform made me realize more that being involved in camp ministry requires many hats to be worn. So you may be asking, what was I doing? Well after an extremely tiring week of work for the programming department and prepping for our summer camps, I was the camp host for the weekend. The host position requires a lot of effort during the weekend, but it requires even extra effort when you have very demanding groups that you must take care of. My responsibilities are to be present at every meal, be on call 24 hours a day, and fulfill any of the requests of the group. On a normal hosting weekend, you have the normal requests of firewood, building campfires, delivering snack and communion, and the occasional flipping of a breaker. However, this was NO normal weekend. All of the groups that were here had similar church names which made it confusing at times to keep all of the requests straight, and they were very needed groups as well. I had requests for driving the camp bus, putting up curtains, technical troubleshooting, reorganizing room set-up, and other various needs. Not only did I need to meet all of these needs, but did I mention that I had to coordinate a WEDDING!!!! Now I am definitely not a wedding planner and this was a very difficult hat to wear during the weekend, because as all of you wedding planner people know Bridezillas are not fun to deal with. Also, every technical difficulty that could have happened with the wedding DID. The stage lights did not work, we could not find the adequate sound equipment, video projection did not work, and parking was a nightmare on our campus because the bus, which I was supposed to use to shuttle guests to the wedding, broke down. But as the weekend continued to go on, I had to remind myself over and over that I am here to be a servant to these people and that this weekend is a time that they have set aside to try and have an experience with God and I can not get in the way of that by being selfish. The practicing of humility within an internship position is never ending and I hope that it continues to teach me about myself and the ministry opportunities that I have.

Action Plan

During this internship, I have experienced many things that have challenged me to grow within the profession of recreation and personally. In order for me to set myself apart as a valuable employee at the camp, I will need to continue to put forth my best efforts at the camp in several areas. As I continue my internship here at the camp, I must take initiative with various tasks around the camp that are different from my regular duties so that I can stand out as an employee that is willing to go the extra mile for the company. Also, I must perform at a level of high quality with the various tasks that I perform around camp with the programming team. I must also follow-thru with various tasks that I complete by over communicating with my work associates and the guests that I serve so that I make sure all of the needs are met in the best way possible. In order for me to become the most valuable employee that I can be, learning new things must always be a high priority and I should not be stubborn in my routine ways.

Communicating with my fellow co-workers has been a constant learning experience for me because many of these workers I have never interacted with before this internship and I must learn to appreciate their various communication styles because everyone is different. In order to develop better communication skills, I will need to continue to speak with my co-workers on an individual basis so that I am not distracted by the communication styles of other individuals that could be participating in the conversation. Also, asking clarifying questions needs to be a priority when I am conversing with others about various work projects because sometimes if I do not ask those questions it can hurt my ability to perform the task correctly and efficiently. In conversing with my work associates, I will better be able to understand the way that they think and interact with others as well as their strengths as part of the team in the work environment.

In order for me to continue to utilize my strengths to impact the camp, I must focus on those strengths and not worry about my weaknesses. Since I have been constantly focusing on recreation activities, I will need to continue to take a leadership role in those activities. One of my biggest strengths is my dedication to my work and being responsible for the tasks which I have been given and in order for me to effectively impact the camp I need to use that hard-working personality to complete my work projects. Also, I have the ability to relate to other individuals because I am a great listener and am willing to accept personal differences. I must use that strength to form good relationships with the summer staff that I am going to be interacting with from now until the end of the summer.

Staff Retreat

This past Wednesday and Thursday I had the pleasure of going to a neighboring camp with our entire camp staff for our pre-summer staff retreat. It was a great experience not only because I was able to socialize and get to know more of the staff better, but it was extremely productive as well. We attempted to focus on a couple of key issues that were needing to be addressed with the camp including customer service and finances. With the economic hardships that are hitting many businesses, we wanted to brainstorm ways in which our organization could save money so that we could wisely and accurately budget our funds in the most efficient way possible. Also, in order to make our guests feel more comfortable, we brainstormed ways in which we could interact with our guests at a more relational level so that they could be better accommodated and welcomed into a warm environment. It has been an amazing experience taking part in so many different planning activities for the camp. Although I may be the intern and my opinions and suggestions aren't extremely valued, I enjoy the fact that I am able to have a voice in the conversations and be a part of the process, even if I am just listening. Being able to listen to the meetings and see how the processes work has been a huge help because it lets me see how it is all done.

Now comes the real challenge! After coming back from the retreat, we have assembled a HUGE task list of things that need to be done between now and May 20th, which is when summer staff arrive. The list seems to be ever-growing, even as we complete tasks it still seems to be getting bigger. All of the stress, tiredness, and soreness are going to be piling up from here on out and I am extremely stoked to see it all get done.

Planning

As everything around camp begins to speed up, we are planning out various work days and schedule deadlines for different tasks that need to be accomplished before summer arrives. In my previous posts, I have discussed the hiring of summer staff and the creation of a staff manual. Well I am happy to say that our staff is fully hired and the manual is complete. YEAH! Now it is time to schedule all of the training that those staff members will do once they arrive on the 24th of May. It is difficult to schedule this training time because not only do we want to train them around the camp and promote good teamwork, we also want to make sure that all of the work projects are done before camp starts. So it is hard to schedule training because we might have a lot of work projects still left to accomplish when they arrive and that could takeaway from our team building and training time.

I must say that I did have a very scary moment this past Friday when we were filming one of the camp rules videos. One of the camp themes is focused on Ninjas so I was "fighting" with another staff member in the background of the video and once we began to film the actual take after rehearsing is when I injured myself. There was one section where I am being "tossed" out of the screen but when I landed on the ground I hit my head on the one part of the field where there is NO grass. But instead of just stopping all of the video shooting because my head was in so much pain, I continued the fighting action and finished the video. Afterwards, all I could think about was Liam Neeson's wife who hit her head skiing but felt fine after the fall but two days later she died at the hospital. As of now, everything is okay with my head and I am grateful that I am not severely injured, but I am glad that I was able to learn a lot about sacrifice which is extremely important in this ministry. I hope to look back on that experience during this summer and just laugh because of how funny the video is.

Speeding Up!

Summer is quickly approaching and our staff is realizing that we have a lot of outdoor work left to do in order to adequately prepare for everything that we want to do this summer. It has been frustrating for me at times knowing that we are this far behind and our team spends more time talking about the same stuff over and over instead of getting out there and doing it. I'm a DO-er by nature not a talker, so I want to get out and get stuff done before there is no time left and our program suffers because of it. I want to be involved in the creative thinking process and the communication about what still needs to be accomplished before summer and I must be flexible and patient with my team because they are the pros not me and I need to trust their judgement and go along helping whenenver and wherever I can.

It has finally been warming up here in Prescott again after all the snow and cold wind that we've had lately. So now it's time to start getting out and active again with mountain biking and hiking around the Thumb Butte area, which will be amazing! I hope everyone else is having a great time with their internships too!

Lack of Sleep

In order to have an internship, complete school work, have some what of a social life, and take a vacation, you must deprive yourself of sleep so that you can get everything done. During the last 7 days I was able to experience a break from all of the hectic work that I've been doing and kind of relax a bit; however, of course I did have those silly midterms and assignments that were given over spring break....weird. But anyway it's back to work at UCYC and it's busier then ever. Things are going to continue to get busy from here til the end of August because of the planning and projects that we are doing in order to get ready for summer. Currently, I am still working on filling summer staff positions and finalizing our staff manual. It has been very difficult to try and build the desired relationships with our incoming summer staff because we are limited in our interaction with them by only being able to conduct phone interviews and corresponde through email; however, it is very important for us to be involved in these people's lives in order to make them feel more comfortable about working here and engaging with all of the youth that will be visiting our facility. Being able to interact with all of these new summer staffers gives me a feeling of self-confidence because I am able to engage with them on both professional and personal levels that allows for the best relationship possible and I am involved in the process that brings them to camp which is amazing. I look forward to the day when I am able to put a name with a face and work with these gifted individuals.

Interviewing

Ok so the new experience this week was taking part in the interview process for our camp summer staff. It was interesting to see how we go about the process in hiring someone, because oddly enough I was a candidate for the same position a few summers ago. Also, it was exciting to be on the other end of an interview and being the one that asked the questions and not trying to answer them. Because summer is approaching faster and faster we crammed 5 phone interviews into about a 2 and a half hour span. It was really cool to listen to the responses of people and for us to realize YES those people are going to fit in well or well we're not too sure about that person. Since I have been given the responsibility of scheduling people to staff our rock wall, I also was given the opportunity to interview and train a new team member which was an awesome experience.

Flexibility

This last week and weekend were all about flexibility within the recreation industry. After the heavy snow that Prescott received a few weeks back, the freezing of the melted snow during the night time hours have caused havoc around camp. We have had several busted water pipes which have required the full attention of our hard working maintenance crew; however, since they were consumed by these issues the rest of the staff was tasked with other duties such as stocking firewood and preparing cabins for our guest groups.

Also, this weekend we were forced to close down our zipline section of the rock climbing wall because of the amount of snow and ice that was around the area. We did this because of safety precautions; however, in doing this we observed that many of the customers were displeased with the cancellation of the zipline. Being flexible also took on more meaning, on Saturday, as we cleaned several cabins around the camp in order to get it ready for a new guest group that was coming in to the facilities.

It was very difficult to be flexible with how the weather affects our jobs on a daily basis because when you are tasked with so many other things to do it makes the other spontaneous tasks more difficult manage. I am a very detail, planning, scheduling type of person and when there are times when flexibility is needed that is when I grow the most because I do something that is out of my normal comfort zone and expand my willingness to serve.

Learning Something New

This week has been very interesting with everything from snow days to slow days to now everything getting busy all over again. It's amazing to see the nature of working in the camp industry and how everyday is different and presents new challenges and opportunities.

For this weekend I'm going to be hosting for several guest groups that will be coming to use our facilities for the next several days. It's going to be a challenging time because I will be working on my public relations skills, which are not very refined, and doing various tasks for them. With the high probability of snow this weekend, my job will be made even harder as I make sure that our guests stay warm with plenty of firewood and that their needs are met to keep them safe in some cold weather conditions.

At times this internship has been difficult with the added responsibilities and stress, but I am so passionate about what I am doing here and what I am a part of in this camp that I have been able to persevere through it all and gain new knowledge and insight into all sorts of different situations.

Beyond 9-5

I've realized this last week that professors don't lie when it comes to the recreation and tourism industry being a labor intensive industry that goes beyond a normal 40 hours/week job. This past week I have been involved in the various program elements of our second winter camp. I have made a recreation video, constructed a stage/set, thought up ideas for back-up recreation games, climbed a 30ft pole to record video, etc. It has been an emotional roller coaster of a weekend from the start of the week stresses to the middle of the week triumphs to the pre-camp jitters. Our program team has really started to mesh more and more as we get these projects accomplished. We are learning how to truly trust one another and pick each other up when one of us is bogged down with too much stuff to do. With the prospect of snow this weekend during our programmed event, we have had to be flexible in our programming by creating back-up plan after back-up plan so that we can create a unique and exciting experience for our guests. I am pumped for what this weekend will bring and can't wait to see all of the kids encounter God in a whole new way.

Behind the Scenes

Since United Christian Youth Camp is a non-profit organization, they are highly dependent on the work done by volunteers and the generous donations from others. Over this last weekend of our middle school winter camp, we had six volunteers come up to help with the programming of the weekend. These volunteers came from Phoenix and Tucson to spend their time being involved in these kids lives. Each of these volunteers were members of the camp summer staff this past summer and were willing to commit to this winter camp event. I am so grateful for their desire and passion to travel far from their homes just so they can be a part of this life changing experience for these students.

Most of the volunteers at UCYC are people who have had some prior work history with the camp organization, but are now off working somewhere else. However, they have committed to spend time completing various facilities projects and help in whatever ways necessary. Most of the training that volunteers experience is hands-on/on-the-job training because it is entirely dependent on what tasks in which they are going to be involved. We do our best to motivate our volunteers through using encouragement notes, using words of affirmation, and serving them in different situations. Also, the organization is committed to help house and feed all of our volunteers. I believe that there is a very high emphasis on the work of volunteers at UCYC and I personally feel that they are highly valued and appreciated by all of the staff members.

Avalanche

It's interesting that the theme of our first camp is Avalanche, when your world comes crashing down upon you. During the last week, I have been stressed, and pushed to the edge mentally, physically, and spiritually. I am learning that I just need to take the leap into the unknown and work with what I have in my life today. As the weekend of our first winter camp approaches, I have been slowly preparing recreation games and activities for the middle school students. Meanwhile, I have been creating a summer staff manual and corresponding with youth pastors. I am trying to spend my off hours relaxing because of how hectic everything is within this youth camp profession.

The mission of this organization is to create a "life changing experience" for the visitors that come to the location. In order for us to create this unique experience, we must create recreation activites that are new, exciting, and effective in building relationships. My role as the program intern is to create these unique recreational activities. I have created several competition games that allow for students to compete in teams, which allows them to not only have fun in participating in the activities as a group, but also remove them from the possibly stressful atmospheres of school, family life, and work.

Everyday I learn how I am just a tool or piece of the complex puzzle that is the staff of United Christian Youth Camp. I remember everyday that this is a serving ministry that impacts the lives of others and anything that I can do to make someone else's experience more comfortable then I should do it. Since living in Prescott for the last few weeks, it has been hard to adjust to the new living situations and being away from known acquaintances, but I have quickly adapted by becoming involved in recreational activities, the surrounding community, and building friendships with other staff members.