Embracing the chance

Justin Smith, also known as “Smitty,” is a big guy, the teddy bear kind that you wish would hug you. The kind with a belly kind of laugh that infects everyone around. You just know he has a big heart to match. But please understand. A big chunk of it has already been given to the kids of Camp Barnabas.

One day a few years ago his mom asked him to watch a “cheesy video,” he says, “that was a bunch of inspirational, feel-good stories. Camp Barnabas was one of them. After watching it she said to me, ‘I’m taking a mission trip’ and I volunteered to come with her.” That was in 2005. He volunteered again for two weeks in 2006 and came on staff the last half of summer 2007. This year he was here for the whole summer.

“At Camp Barnabas I found out what love really looks like,” he explains. “Being here has taught me the difference between what’s real and what is not. We ask people all the time, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ but we don’t really care. Here everything these campers do is real. When they’re happy, it’s real happy and when they’re sad, it’s real sad. When they love you, they really love you and when they need your help, they really need your help.

“It’s the hip thing at my school to wash someone’s feet… you know, to show you have a servant’s heart. Let me tell you something. It is never cool to change someone’s brief. I’m learning  ways to serve somebody and really serve somebody. I can listen to the people at school talk about serving someone but I now know down deep that when you serve someone to the point you feel like you’re going to throw up and to the point your heart is broken …. that’s serving. When you’re emptied out and you have to fully rely that God is going to take over from here ….that’s serving.”

Smitty had no idea what he’d gotten himself into when he came to camp that first year. “My mom had worked with children with special needs and my sisters were great with them so I just thought, hey, it’s genetic, I’ll be just fine. Then we got here and we’re in orientation and they have a shower chair sitting there and I’m thinking, ‘We’re going to be showering them?’ and then they start showing us how to change a brief and I begin to think, ‘This might be harder than I thought.’

“So I decide to approach it like a football game. I can psych myself up for this. I’m sitting at lunch and I’m thinking, ‘They’re going to be here in about four hours, I’ll be ready.’ Then the front doors of the dining hall open and two people come and say ‘Steven is here.’ It takes a minute for them to understand they’re talking to me. I look down at my card and realize my camper is Steven. My mom says I was white as a ghost and she really thought I was going to pass out.

“I walk outside and meet the skinniest man I’d ever seen. He was sitting in a wheelchair. I said hi and he looked back at me and said something but I didn’t understand a word he said. And then his mom was gone.

“For the first three days I kept thinking, ‘Poor little kid in a wheelchair, so sad. He’s got it so bad in a wheelchair.’ I was in a constant state of panic. I still didn’t understand a word he said. The first time he needed to go to the bathroom I understood enough to know that’s what he needed but my two counselors were busy with another camper and so Steven shows me what to do to help him, step by step. That’s how the week was, him showing me what he needed, him teaching me.

“Then one night we’re at the squirrel fountain, brushing our teeth, fighting gingivitis under the stars, and he says to me, ‘How are you doing in your life? How can I pray for you?’ And I’m thinking how can you ask me that? I’m the one supposed to be praying for you.’

“Wouldn’t you know that I was going through the toughest time in my life that summer and it wasn’t a doctor, a psychiatrist or a minister who helped me through it? It was a 24-year old man with cerebral palsy that the world says is absolutely useless who got me through it. And if you ask him why he would do such a thing, he’d say he’s just being himself. And that man is still my best friend. Even though he’s at home and I’m at college, we talk at least three times a week, him telling me how he’s doing, checking on me. He truly is the best friend anyone can have.”

In fact, the entire Smith household has embraced Steven as their own and he often spends the night there. Smitty, Steven and some other friends even made a video about the difficulties Steven encounters when he tries to be a part of the world – everything from people’s stares to the stairs that keep him out of places he’d like to go.

Smitty speaks often now at wrap-up, the closing service each day of camp.  He brings a fresh approach to Scripture, captivating the audience  - whether he’s describing Goliath by standing on top of a chair to show the hugeness of the giant or using simple noisemakers to tell the tale of a watchmaker who never lost sight of his purpose in life and did his best at what God had shown him to do.

Smitty hopes he never loses sight of what God has taught him here. Or the campers He uses to teach. Like Kyle R. Last summer Kyle had been pretty reticent in his interactions with the cabin staff and volunteers. Smitty had been concerned. Communication, as he’d learned with Steven, is so important with the campers but he felt he just hadn’t been able to reach Kyle.  “I kept wondering if Kyle knew that I loved him.” The next evening, at bedtime Smitty was reading Kyle’s favorite book to him, Arthur’s Birthday Party. He looked at Kyle and said, “I love you.” And Kyle leaned over and kissed him. “I cried like a girl,” Smitty says. “I knew God had given me my answer.”

Justin Smith is one of almost 140 summer staff that served at Camp Barnabas this year. Over 90% of this year’s group has served previously as a volunteer. They come from North Carolina to California and Michigan to Florida. All for the same reason – because there’s something about the emptied out – relying on God - kind of serving you do at Camp Barnabas that changes your life.