Erin Jones - LDS Living
This summer marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the first Young Women Camp, commonly known as Girl’s Camp.
On June 9, 1929, at a conference of the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association, church leaders announced the creation of an official summer camp for girls. This camp was Brighton LDS Girls Camp, a campsite in the Wasatch Mountains of the Salt Lake Valley. Campers hiked, rode horses, and cooked in the outdoors.
Although feeling the Spirit and experiencing the outdoors are still a big part of Young Women Camp, the purposes of camp have expanded over the years. Today, camp is focused on raising young women to be leaders and to follow the Lord.
According to the Young Women Camp Manual, young women “can find joy in an outdoor setting that will strengthen their love for each other and the gospel and their commitment to stand together.” The goals of Young Women camp include drawing closer to God, feeling reverence for nature, becoming more self-reliant, respecting the environment, serving others, building friendships, and developing leadership skills.
Lynda Connell, a former director of the Young Women Camp in Renton, Washington, ran a camp that was so successful that neighboring stakes frequently seek her help in planning. She believes that camp is a week-long opportunity to influence the future leaders of the Church. “Young Women Camp is like a year of Young Women [meetings] in a week. . . . Camp is 100 hours in a week of opportunity to influence and train and grow,” Connell said.
Connell finds that aligning camp with the Young Women Values and the suggestions in the Camp Manual helps to accomplish the purposes of camp. “I think while [the girls] were having fun . . . they were learning skills that they could apply to any calling we have in the church,” she said.
Focusing on Young Women Values brings the Spirit into the camp. Some ideas to keep the Spirit in camp include opening and closing camp with prayers for gratitude and protection, giving the young women solitary time to pray and read scriptures, and holding fireside testimony meetings. It is also important to follow the camp rules.
Connell recalls a time when leaders wanted to break camp rules and light fires during a burn ban. “I don’t think people realize how many things take the Spirit out,” said Connell. “If you want the Spirit, you have to make the environment for the Spirit to come.”
As camp director, Connell also wanted her young women to develop sisterhood and learn to love each other despite their differences. “The most important thing is that we have one purpose together. . . . We can be different as night and day and still serve together,” she said.
Today there are hundreds of Young Women camps around the world, and each camp is different and unique. The Camp Manual states that “young women and their local leaders select and plan activities to fit their local circumstances and needs.”
When making these plans, Connell believes that camp leaders should consult their Heavenly Father and their priesthood leaders to determine a camp’s specific needs. “Any righteous woman who hits her knees can get direction for and then lead camp,” she said.
As leaders and campers plan together, they should always plan camp with “the end in mind,” as Connell said, and one of the best “ends” a camp can have is to create Christ-like leaders. “That was probably my biggest desire approaching camp,” said Connell, “that the girls would leave feeling like leaders; that they could do whatever the Lord asked them to do, because they’d been taught the principles of leadership.” Connell had the adult leaders live among the girls so the girls could see examples of good leadership.
Today, the Church recommends letting the older girls function as Youth Camp Leaders, or YCLs, where they can be involved in planning camp, teaching the younger girls, and serving in leadership roles. Connell said she had some opposition when she first started using YCLs, but that the program has been an enormous success. When the YCLs caught the camp vision, they wanted their camp to be successful.
Connell recalls a time when an adult leader was struggling to hold supplies. Immediately, several YCLs jumped up to help her. It was then that she knew these girls had learned the true principles of Christ-like leadership.
“That is probably my biggest testimony about camp, that it can happen anywhere, but it really is about learning to lead the Savior’s way, and using the Young Women Values and all the purposes of camp to become a better leader,” said Connell.
So from its humble beginnings as a place for girls to experience the outdoors, Young Women Camp has become an opportunity for the young women of the church to learn skills of leadership and service. Camp is a unique experience for young women to leave the world behind and come closer to the Lord.
“Camp is so much more than sleeping outside,” said Connell. “That’s not the purpose, that’s just the vehicle.”
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