A Place of Love

     When asked to write an article for this blog, I thought it was going to be easy. I was wrong. After four years of working for Shiloh, I feel like there are hundreds of stories I could tell, all of which are meaningful to me, and all of which give a small taste of the many things that Shiloh does for its campers and its staff. And that’s where the difficulty comes in. What story can I tell to sum up what Camp Shiloh has meant to me?
      I’ve settled in on the story of a camper that I had in my cabin in the summer of 2008. I didn’t go into that summer expecting to be a cabin counselor. I had started off filling the position of Youth Counseling Director, but when third session rolled around, a counselor was needed in one of the cabins, so I got to re-enter the world of cabin counselors for a week and a half. This ended up being one of the most challenging sessions I would experience during my four-year stint with Shiloh, but I also had some of my favorite interactions with a camper named Ernesto.
      I’m not sure how many times Ernesto had been to camp, but I know this wasn’t his first year. He was aware of the camp’s expectations for its campers, and he continually made decisions to push the limits with my co-counselor Bradley and I. We had an unusually large cabin that session (10 campers), and there was really no way to keep an eye on every camper throughout the day. By the end of the session, our cabin was at odds with each other, and Ernesto was one of many campers that seemed to always end up at the center of the conflict. I probably broke up more fights within my cabin during that session than I ever had to break up in any other session, and somehow, I always seemed to end up one on one with Ernesto, talking through whatever conflict had taken place that day.
     The conversation that I remember most clearly took place a couple of days before the end of the session. The conflict in our cabin had peaked, and several of our campers had been involved in a situation that almost escalated to punches being thrown. We had to separate the majority of our campers, and I ended up one on one with Ernesto again. We spent the first 15-30 minutes in silence, kicking a soccer ball against a backstop, and just trying to cool down. The frustration from the continual conflict throughout the session had worn on both Ernesto and me, so I really feel like kicking that soccer ball as hard as we could was therapeutic for both of us. But after a time of releasing frustration, and shedding some tears, Ernesto and I shared one of the most meaningful conversations that I experienced in my time at Shiloh. He told me about a sickness that his grandmother (his primary guardian at the time) was experiencing, along with some of the other difficult things that were happening within his family. He told me that he didn’t like being frustrated all the time, and hated reacting out of anger, but that he didn’t know how to react differently. He communicated that he respected me, and that he was sorry for causing conflict in the cabin. And after we had both said, “I love you”, the last comment that I can remember hearing Ernesto say is that he wished he could be more like me.
     Unfortunately, some of the campers, including Ernesto, were sent home from camp early because of the situation that took place that night. I always hated seeing kids leave Shiloh early, but I felt that the conversations that we were able to have had been important. His story came to represent something about Shiloh that has always meant a lot to me. Shiloh is a place of growth. I’ve witnessed it in the campers, and I’ve witnessed it in the staff. You come as you are to Shiloh, and without a second thought, you are loved. I’ve had the opportunity to be on both ends of the spectrum during my time at Shiloh, trying to pour love into those, who like Ernesto, come to Shiloh needing it, and I’ve also received love from the staff and the campers when I probably didn’t deserve it. It’s something that’s hard to understand fully unless you’ve experienced it. But in short, God is love, and if you want to really know God in a deeper way, you should go to Shiloh.  

Tanner Albright 
Shiloh Alumni 2006-2009

Tanner worked at Camp Shiloh from 2006-2009.  He was a Cabin Counselor for his first three summers and served as the Youth Counseling Director his last summer.  He is currently working as the Resident Youth Minister at Central Church of Christ in Amarillo, Texas and volunteers with the Boys and Girls Club of Amarillo.