2011 Cadet Camporee Underway

Nearly 3,000 campers, counselors and staff for the 2011Cadet International Camporee, as well as parents and others, gathered to celebrate a lively, outdoor worship service on Sunday morning at Camp Whitetail near Reed City, Mich.

The event opened with a presentation from a singing group and then moved into the body of the service with more songs and a sermon.

"This is a well-attended event," said Dick Broene, executive director of the Calvinist Cadet Corp. "It gives cadets and others a chance to be together and to worship our Lord together."

The service took place in an amphitheater built in the remote, rural setting in which the camporee, held every three years, is occurring through Wednesday.

"The kids are having a blast out here this week – and we're having good weather," added Broene, whose organization has cadet groups in congregations all over North America.

In terms of the weather, this year’s hot but sunny camporee has been in stark contrast to the deluge of rain that fell on and cancelled the last camporee in 2008 in Burk's Falls, Ontario, north of Toronto.

Held every three years since 1966, the Toronto-area camporee was cut short for the first when the heavy rains turned camp sites into ponds of nearly impassable mud.

On the Calvinist Cadet website, there is a testimony about the 2008 event from camper Levi Snoeyink.

"My favorite part of the camporee was building our own shelter. It was lots of fun trying to make a giant shelter to fit our entire cadre and their stuff. My worst part of the camporee was the mud!" he said.

But this year the camporee, which moves from site to site around North America, is going on as hoped, prayed for and planned.

Using the theme "Prepare Yourself" from the Bible verse 2 Timothy 2:15, this year's camporee has drawn more than 1,200 cadets and staff to the site that is owned as a hunting  camp by a family who offered use of it for the camporee.

The verse in 2 Timothy is: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."

"This is a huge event for me. It blends my love for the ministry and for the cadet program," said Frank Engleage, an associate pastor of a CRC congregation in Ontario. He is working during the camporee as one of the chaplains.

"I think what you see here is a huge transformation process among the cadets," he said. "The identity of who they were when they arrived here … is getting stretched and transformed. They find out who they are and what they are capable of doing. They face a lot of challenges."

Cadets, who have trained for the camporee for the last two or three years, found out just how challenging last Wednesday, soon after they arrived. They were divided into groups, called cadres, with young men they had never met before. This was to get them out of their comfort zones, and allow them to meet and know people beyond their own communities.

They were also given tree poles and sheets of plastic from greenhouses and told where in the sprawling camp to take them so they could build their tents.

"That was a lot of work, but it was fun," said one of the cadets, taking a break after lunch one day last week.

"They are helping us to learn new things every day," added the boy next to him.

Standing nearby, Cal Vanden Bosch, one of the counselors for the boys taking a break after lunch, said:  "I come here because I know that there are friends in Christ who I can meet all over. You get different perspectives on how people live." Campers in his cadre are from Iowa, Alberta, Canada, and Michigan.

"We have special devotions we go through at every meal. The kids got the devotions before camporee and had a chance to go through them."

Jason Damsteegt, the other counselor in Vander Bosch’s cadre, attended a camporee as a youth and has volunteered to be a junior counselor or counselor a few times since.

"An experience like this helps make you a little more open to do new and different things," he said. "I tended to be someone who liked to stay by himself. I was shy. But I loved coming here as a camper, being camping and outdoors. I've been a junior counselor and now I’m a counselor."

Besides tent building, the cadets were taught rope and knot tying, use of an ax, fire building and cooking out of doors before the camporee.

Late last week, Bob de Jonge drove a golf cart, weaving in and out of hundreds of boys, young men and adults who were making their way along the hot, dusty path at the camp in upstate Michigan.

He was taking a visitor on a tour of the 550-acre camp, which volunteers had been working at during the weekends for the last two years to get ready for this event.

Jokingly, many of the Calvinist Cadet campers and even a couple counselors tried to hitch a ride in the golf cart.  "No room, no room, sorry," said de Jonge. "Anyway, you have work you still have to do."

The campers and counselors were on their way to school buses that would take them to perform service work during the afternoon on a nearby, national hiking trial.

"I love these camporees," said de Jonge, who also works as art director for the Calvinist Cadet Corp, which is based in Grand Rapids, Mich. "It is a way for a Christian man to spent time with young men. I think the men out here try to show the young people how to live as a Christian man and how to have respect for themselves and for God."

Cadets and staff come from various denominations, but many are members of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

Bouncing along the path next to the outdoor site where the large worship service — open to everyone — occurred Sunday morning —, de Jonge added, "Plus, everyone has a lot of fun out here during the camporee – at the same time they gain an appreciation for the outdoors as God's creation."

Although the cadets and counselors he had driven by awhile back were going on a work detail, much of what happens at the event, in fact, is focused on outdoor fun.

Some of the campers spent Friday morning at the archery site, some learned to track through the woods with the help of a Global Positioning System, and still others made and stained leather belts under a large white tent.

Later, cadets used high-powered fire hoses in the "Fireman's Rodeo" to try to hit and move certain objects. They then returned to their makeshift camps to make dinner over fires they started from scratch, and after that they gathered for camp-wide devotions. They turned in after spending time talking, praying and telling jokes around campfires.

At the camporee, some have already gone and others are yet to go tubing in the Muskegon River. All of the cadets will go on a day-long excursion to a lake or water park.

As he was saying good-bye to his visitor, de Jonge said that he has been to many camporees and always returns home weary, but energized and changed. He also said that the Calvinist Cadet Corps works hard for three years to put on the camporees, but the preparations are worth it. He especially likes to see how the events bring together the counselors and the boys.

"We get a lot of regular, blue-collar guys who volunteer their time as counselors here. Often, in the eyes of the world they don't get a lot of credit, but they can do wonders just by their love and personal examples for the boys," he said.