With our three summer interns returning to their fall classes and schedules on campus, we are thankful for their ministry and service to our congregation! Sam Hayes, Daniel Ho, and Caleb Rolling shared their time with our Children's and Youth ministries, leading Sunday School classes, camps, helping at retreats, and more. As their internships came to a close, each reflected on moments that mattered to them this summer and how they saw God at work with the youth and teens at Blacknall.
Sam Hayes
Sam leads a skit during Camp Discover in July.
During one of the days at Camp Discover, our group went to serve at a food bank. While we were shopping at a store for food to bring, the boys in my group took control of the process, identifying products on our list and completing the task with excitement. Watching this mob of boys crowd around our carts as we stacked boxes of cake mix and pasta high in the air, I felt an emotion that I couldn't identify at first because I wasn't expecting it: I was envious. Working with children in ministry gives leaders the chance to identify the curiosities, joys, and creativity that adulthood has stolen from us. It was moments like that day at the food pantry that showed me not how much I had gained from adulthood, but how much of my childhood I hadn't held onto tightly enough.
Daniel Ho
Daniel shares with high schoolers during their June retreat.
Reflecting on this past summer, my time on the High School Retreat was deeply impactful. I was able to have conversations with students that were fun and lighthearted, but also deeply thoughtful about God and how they want to pursue Him.
Spending time with these students offered a rare glimpse into how Blacknall's ministries and families cultivate their faith to be passionate, yet also nuanced and authentic. This context gives me insight into how important it is for high schoolers to have great church programs to help support and form them as they grow, preparing them for when many of them go off to college. I have learned from working with college students that a good church for high schoolers makes a great deal of difference in the life of a college student. Blacknall is one of these great churches.
Caleb Rolling
There are some things that are predictable about a summer chalked-full of youth and children’s programming: hours in the car with youth-chosen music, sweaty games of Spikeball, making sure nobody is left behind in Buc-ee’s, or late nights of camp activities. However, getting dubbed as “drill sergeant” by the students was not on my bingo card for the summer. Yet on the Great Escape, that’s what happened.
Caleb wore plenty of protective gear during the Great Escape’s “Crud War,” in which campers throw around water balloons, shaving cream, slime, and colored powder.
The first time I stepped foot in the small dorm room that me and 16 boys would call home for the week, I knew we’d have to run a tight ship, lest the room be overrun by deconstructed suitcases, soggy beach towels, and junk food wrappers.
As the week went on, we all had fun, the room remained moderately tidy, and everyone got to bed within a few minutes of the camp-mandated lights out time. The cost? Well, I picked up the name “drill sergeant.” And without any initiative of my own, I started to hear others besides the middle school boys call me “drill sergeant” on a Sunday morning. Then the name followed me, somehow, into a week of Camp Discover, too. Sometimes, I’m still going by “drill sergeant” at church, too.
When it’s all said and done, even though I unexpectedly picked up a new nickname, I hope the students know that this “drill sergeant” had a great time with them this summer. I may still have diaper goop and shaving cream in my ears from the Great Escape Crud Wars to prove it.