Generations of Impact at Eagle Lake

Every summer, kids from across the country show up to attend Eagle Lake Camps for a week of outdoor activities. Experiencing the beauty of creation, they come for camping, mountain biking, zip lining, and more, pressing the boundaries of what they think they’re capable of.

However, at the end of the week when they return home, campers are left with a more lasting and powerful impact — a stronger, or sometimes brand new, relationship with Christ.

The Impact of the Gospel at Camp: One Camper’s Story

This was the case with a camper from this past summer named Zayan. Growing up in a nonreligious home, Zayan had limited exposure to church growing up, only attending occasionally when his older sister, Jasmina, would take him.

Jasmina, who has worked at camp for the past few years and is now on staff with Eagle Lake’s Emerging Leaders Program, had been praying for her brother to gain more exposure to Christ. She asked Zayan if he would like to attend camp for the upcoming summer, and when he said yes, she prayed that he would receive the funding to go.

URGENT NEED: EAGLE LAKE COUNSELORS

Know a college student looking for a fun summer job that makes a difference?

Being a Counselor at Eagle Lake Camps gives you a summer that makes a difference in the lives of kids AND in your life, too! We have positions at our overnight property in the mountains above Colorado Springs and on our Eagle Lake On Location Day Camp teams.

Go to eaglelakestaff.com today to find a summer job you’ll love!

“He wrote a camp scholarship letter, and in the letter, he wrote that he wanted to attend camp so he could spend a week with his sister,” Jasmina says. “And then he was fully funded. It was an awesome opportunity to see the body of Christ come together and give for a kid they’ve never met to go to camp and hear the gospel for the first time. It was so impactful.”

Zayan came to Colorado from New Mexico to attend a week of Eagle Lake’s high school overnight Highlands camp. When he showed up, one of Jasmina’s friends gave him a Bible — his first Bible. Though Zayan enjoyed the week’s outdoor activities like rafting and camping, his favorite part of camp was the connection he made with the other campers in his cabin and his counselor, Zach.

“At first I was nervous because I didn’t know anyone,” Zayan says. “But I got used to it right away because of the cabin of guys I was in. It was the first time that I had a group where we could talk about God, and that was good.”

When Zayan’s parents came to pick him up from the week, he expressed that he had fun and learned a Bible verse, and then recited Romans 6:23 to his family. “I had prayed for months for God to expose him to the gospel and prepare his heart to know Christ when he got to camp,” Jasmina remembers. “And there he was, memorizing Scripture, holding his first Bible.”

Serving the Next Generation Through Crew

Now, Zayan is returning to Eagle Lake this upcoming summer to serve with Eagle Lake’s Crew team, which is a 5-week service program where high school students come to serve other campers through cooking, cleaning, and working in the camp stores. During Crew, campers get to be in a Bible study with their small groups, diving deeper into the Word and their relationships with Christ.

“The Crew program at Eagle Lake fosters such a unique environment,” says Andrew Brown, Eagle Lake’s director of recruiting, marketing, and communications. “The campers make lifelong friends, and they make huge steps in their discipleship and sanctification. And the counselors who walk alongside them really equip them for a lifelong pursuit of Christ.”

Having done the Crew program herself as a counselor, Jasmina is excited to see her little brother return to camp to continue growing and developing his relationship with Christ.

“At home, he doesn’t have a parent who encourages him to walk with Jesus or take him to church on Sunday,” she says. “But then there’s this place where he can experience God, and he can be in Christ with community. And he’s developing that on his own, and I’m entrusting him to the Lord.”

For Jasmina, seeing her brother come to camp has been encouraging and a reflection on her time as a counselor, where she has similarly poured into kids who are like Zayan and experiencing the gospel for the first time.

“Being a counselor, I’ve had the opportunity to steward relationships with campers, where Christianity is not important in their home lives,” she says. “And they just came because they love camp, and they love the community. What an opportunity we have to be a reflection of who Christ is.”

Continuing the Cycle

Zayan’s story is just one of the many campers that come through Eagle Lake’s overnight and day camps. As he comes back to serve on the same program his sister did, he is an example of the generational effect of discipleship and impact that campers experience at camp.

“We see this happen a lot, where campers receive the benefits of Crew as a camper and then they want to return to be that for other kids,” Andrew says. “And then many of them want to come back to actually become a counselor like others have done for them. Then, the generational cycle starts over and over and over again.”

Join us in praying for Eagle Lake Camps this summer, for the thousands of kids like Zayan who may attend camp for the first time, will hear and receive the gospel, and will keep coming back year after year to grow and develop as disciplemakers.

Discipleship Tip:

Jasmina was able to impact her brother’s faith by being willing to bring him to camp and pass on what she’s learned to the next generation. Consider — who might be the next generation that you could impact? What are ways that you’ve been impacted, led, or discipled that you could potentially do for someone else?