Camp Shehaqua: The Best Summer Camp In The World
Camp Shehaqua. The camp you wish you could have gone to for your last family reunion.
For most families with young children and restless young teens, trying to decide what to do during the summer to keep the whole family busy and having fun is a challenge. Shehaqua Family Camp helps make the decision easier.
Family camp? Really? Yes, really. The sound of it may be foreign for most online gamers and twitter-happy teens today but you’d be surprised to learn how many unsuspecting teens and adolescents decide to go to family camp and end up coming back the following year. The Shehaqua Family Camp held in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains is a unique family-oriented program offered by volunteers in the Unification faith community. Hundreds of Unificationists and their guests rave about the fun and spiritually nourishing weeks where young Unificationists serving as directors, presenters and counselors providing an authentic community wherein participants experience God’s heart through self-discovery, God-centered relationships and the beauty of nature.
Participants enjoy fun presentations, discussions, nature, sports, crafts, hikes, music, and socials. The camp also implements service projects with the aid of park management to improve the facilities. This summer, 17-year-old Nathan, a Unificationist-born youth who has been camping with his family since infancy, invited several of his friends. One of his friends, Aaron, learned how to connect with his family on a deeper, more spiritual level through the activities, which helped him to connect to God’s love within himself and learn how to express that love to others. For him, the camp provides a tranquil environment where you don’t have to deal with everyday problems and everyone is super energetic and really friendly.
The content presented is age-appropriate Bible stories for the younger children, and basic Divine Principle—the teachings of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon—for teenagers. Programs for adult and young-adult participants include a Health Retreat, a Young Professionals Retreat and an Intentional Community Retreat and a Married Couples Retreat.
The Shehaqua Family organization prides itself in maintaining a volunteer-driven program. All participants share the workload of running the camp—setting up, preparing meals, cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning up after meals, etc., which gives everyone a more personal stake in a having successful experience. This also keeps the programs inexpensive and allows transparency in the decision-making and use of funds.
Each year the Shehaqua Family offers a Harvest Festival, a Winter Retreat, a Spring Gathering and a Summer Camp. The Summer Family Camp is the largest and best attended.
When Spring rolls back around you begin to dread planning out the long summer ahead for your children and family, you won’t need to worry or stress too much this time. Just visit www.Live4Joy.org and begin preparing for the best camping experience that will keep you, your family and your friends coming back every year for more.