LAUREN HAUSCHILD

Often when a retreat group is visiting Camp Barnabas, the year-round staff will sit and talk with them at meals. This spring, one group asked each of to tell how long we’d been involved with camp and how we got involved. All of us answered, but we were smiling inside as we knew the conversation would eventually reach Lauren Hauschild. When it did she answered, “Always.” Confused, the retreat group asked her to explain. And she shared with them the story of how, as a 12-year old camper at Kanakuk Kamp she began having pain in her leg. When she went home, her parents took her to the doctor where a cancerous tumor was discovered. When they explained to Lauren that meant she would lose the lower part of leg and undergo chemotherapy, which would make her sick and lose her hair, her first question was, “Can I still go back to camp?" Her mother set out to make that happen.

The next summer she arrived, bald and weak from her treatments and, although she enjoyed being there, it wasn’t the same as it had been before. Sitting on a bench one afternoon she met Cyndy Teas, Medical Director at Kanakuk. When Cyndy asked how things were going, Lauren told her, “I wish I could just be a normal kid at camp.” Cyndy asked what that would look like and, as Lauren began to describe a place where different is normal and normal is different, the seeds of Camp Barnabas were planted. Now on staff as Administrative Coordinator, Lauren gently guides all the year-round staff in staying true to the original purpose of camp – providing life-changing opportunities to people with special needs in a Christian camp setting. 

Lauren is a graduate of The University of Oklahoma, where she received a Bachelors Degree in Human Relations.