News and Views

By Melissa Lauber

If you take a map and draw a 40-mile circle around Frostburg UMC, you will discover a landscape of hope, created over the past 47 years by United Methodist and other youth who have spent weeks during their summer break restoring or repairing hundreds of homes. 

CAMP HOPE is an acronym. It stands for Christian Appalachian Mountain Project Helping Other People Enthusiastically. They take the enthusiastically part very seriously.

This year, across two weeks, 191 youth and their adult chaperones (who are co-laborers) from 12 churches will work on more than 26 sites. Attendance is lower this year, after COVID canceled two years of camp. But Sharon Grim, the chair of CAMP HOPE’s Board of Directors, sees the same excitement in the campers and among the homeowners they assist.

After working with CAMP HOPE for 37 years, she recognizes the joy that comes from service. She also believes it’s almost impossible for most people to put the emotions that CAMP HOPE creates into words. 

“It’s intangible,” Grim said, “but it’s one of the best feelings in the world. You feel joy here. It’s infectious.”

One year, the campers repaired a porch and steps for a disabled woman, which allowed her to step outside her house into the sunshine for the first time in three years. That kind of transformation echoes the spirit of the camp. 

While not all the stories are as dramatic, Amy Willis, the Camp’s program director, is convinced the campers experience the kind of joy that comes with service. For a lot of the campers, this is their first experience in mission. They’re given the opportunity “to act out their faith in service,” she said. “That changes you. It can change your life. It also expands your expression of what faith is and can be.”

But it’s not just service – fun and friendship are built in, too.

Church youth groups sign up for CAMP HOPE. The group can be as small as three youth and two adults and grow upwards from there to a group from 24 from each church. The campers stay in dormitories at Frostburg University and work with people from their own congregation. But they’re also given time each day for fun activities, including a visit to Rocky Gap State Park. The campers also lead morning devotions and vespers.

Relationship is at the heart of everything – as campers are urged to get to spend time with the homeowners. Some campers marvel at the stories that are shared, others relish the fudge and sweet ice-tea that have been shared on the worksites, some are empowered as they learn to use power tools and gain confidence in unexpected skills, and still others learn that the world is broader than they once believed.

Campers also form deep connections. In fact, there have been a few CAMP HOPE couples that since married.

This year, Grim’s granddaughter, Katie, is working in the camp’s kitchen at Frostburg UMC, where participants gather for meals, planning and worship. For her, it is a family affair – “with us the sun rises and sets on CAMP HOPE,” she said. In fact, when her grandfather died in 2012, the CAMP HOPE logo was engraved on his tombstone.

CAMP HOPE began in 1977. A group from Frostburg UMC had traveled to Kentucky to participate in the Appalachian Service Project and noted similarities with the communities surrounding their churches. The Rev. Tom Kaylor linked the spiritual needs of Frostburg UMC’s youth with the area’s poverty, housing needs and other community concerns and started CAMP HOPE.

Over the years, 110 churches from nine states have participated in CAMP HOPE. Today, Camp leaders are concerned that the COVID pandemic significantly diminished the youth’s interest in participating and the assistance of other congregations that support Camp Hope.

The CAMP HOPE experience costs about $150,000 a year, Willis estimated. Individual campers pay $325 to attend and each work team contributes $900. To make ends meet the Camp’s board of directors accepts contributions from community and church groups 

They also welcome donations of meals, supplies, and “all the things,” Willis said.

The theme of this year’s Camp is “Home.” Home, the campers learned, is love. God is home. And home is a place that is made whole with hope – “Helping Other People Enthusiastically.”

To learn more about CAMP HOPE and to contribute, visit www.camphopemd.com.