Summer camp produces blankets for children in need

CEDAR HILL—Typical summer activities at Mount Lebanon Baptist Encampment for preteen campers include swimming, hiking and outdoor fun. But this summer, campers are producing something more than summer memories.

Children entering third grade to ones entering seventh grade take one hour out of their week at camp to make blankets for children in need.

“The kids take the blankets that are unmade, and they knot them all the way around and put a little card on them with their names on it. Then, those blankets are going to mission projects all over the world,” said Valerie Rhodes, one of the staff supervisors of the blanket-making activity.

The project will produce somewhere between 1,200 and 1,300 blankets this summer, said Missy Reimer, preteen camp dean for June 28 through July 2 and children’s minister at High Pointe Baptist Church in Cedar Hill.

Although some of the orange fleece blankets will be sent overseas, Reimer said the blankets also will meet local needs.

“We’re going to be using most of these blankets actually in the Dallas area this year, so it’s a really awesome opportunity for the kids to minister,” Reimer said. “Also, a lot of their churches are taking blankets with them either to do local missions or their church mission projects.“

Reimer believes that this local focus is important to the experience that the kids have with mission work.

“Some of the kids will come face to face with some of the ministries that the blankets will be going to. … If you instill the idea of service at a young age, they really like doing things for other people,” Reimer said.

Before the campers begin their work on the blankets, they are shown a brief video that shows the distribution of the blankets. They also are shown a slideshow of pictures taken during the distribution of stuffed bears campers made last year.

Preteen campers at Mount Lebanon Baptist Encampment package blankets for distribution to mission projects. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Mount Lebanon Baptist Encampment)

“We’ve really taken this mission project to a whole new level this year, and part of that may be having a video at the beginning that shows the blankets being given to kids in Bolivia and closing the loop with kids last year by showing them pictures of the bears being giving in Kenya,” Rhodes said. “It’s really cool to see them say, ‘Wow, we did that!’”

Reimer believes the campers are learning an important lesson from this activity that will have a lasting effect on their lives.

“If you can get them at this age with the idea of ‘I can actually do something that makes a difference,’ then you see that they continue to do that through their youth group and through college and on into life,” Reimer said.

Rhodes agrees that a simple blanket may be a means of greater work in the lives of the campers and the recipients of the blankets.

“What will it be like when someday when we’re in heaven, and we meet somebody who’s there because of God’s loving being shared for them? Maybe, it will be because of a little part that we have,” Rhodes said. “I usually tell them that the (blankets) … are tools that we use to share God’s love with kids around the world. It’s not the thing. It’s the means of communicating.”

Reimer also believes that this work done by a young group of kids an important move to involve a younger generation.

“Almost everything that you have to do now, you have to gear toward the younger age,” she said, citing statistics that most Christians make a profession of faith in Christ before age 14. “So, if you show them that they able to do something to change the world, they realize that they can actually do it. It will empower them.”