Striving over Struggle
Striving over Struggle
Onna first came to Bay Shore, when she was five, as a Teddy Bear Camper with her mom and cousin. She attended all the traditional age-level camps, sports camps and the arts camps. She even attended Family Camp with her family, but at Basketball Camp, something happened.
She realized that all the years before, she was just going through the motions; Church every Sunday, Sunday School, and VBS. But she had “never accepted God into my life.” Basketball Camp in 2022 is when she made that step forward. She realized, “I wanted to praise Him, that I wanted to follow Him, and I wanted to share about Him.” She came home from camp and met with her pastor and asked if she could give a sermon. Her first sermon was about Basketball Camp and her experience of accepting God fully into her life.
She was “13 or 14” when she delivered that first sermon. She’s delivered seven sermons at her church now and is 16 years old.
She is most thankful for the staff at Bay Shore, she said “the staff is amazing. If it’s core staff or cabin leading staff, they’re just always there, and want to help everybody follow Jesus.” And, Bay Shore Camp feels like a really great family. Everybody knows each other, “they’re friends and they act like brothers and sisters,” “they’re a really great family.”
She says, “there are times that it’s a struggle because I don’t have a lot of friends who are Christians. I have put myself around some of the kids who are and I had a couple of friends last year who really bashed on it, and so, like, I had to learn how to separate myself from those people, because faith was, like, one of the things that meant the most to me. And so I know that was a struggle, but being able to keep doing the church thing and learning a little bit more, I was able to come through it because I was still giving sermons.”
This year at Senior High Camp, feeling like she had been struggling spiritually, she made a decision to recommit to following Jesus.
She hopes to be back to camp next summer as a cabin leader, helping to nurture younger campers, and possibly working with Bay Shore’s Traveling Day Camp Program where she can help kids learn more about Jesus.
