ELCA International Camp Counselor Program at Calumet

Two international camp counselors spent this summer at Calumet Lutheran Camp and Conference Center, West Ossipee, N.H., as part of the ELCA’s International Camp Counselor Program.

Adama Isa

Rahel Barz

For Adama Isa, 29, from Nigeria and Rahel Barz, 18, from Germany, this was their first time in the United States.

Calumet, the outdoor ministry of the New England Synod, has participated in this unique program of ELCA Outdoor Ministries since it began in 1992. The idea was conceived in 1985 by a group of camp directors and their leader, the Rev. Herb Brokering. They dreamt of great things – people from all over the world going back and forth between countries working in Lutheran camps, making friends, learning to get along together and visiting each other. This summer, the ELCA had 38 international counselors, ages 18-30, from 24 countries, working in 29 camps.

Isa teaches homiletics and Christian ethics at the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN) Bible College. She graduated in 2005 from the Theological College of Northern Nigeria, but, in Nigeria, ordination is only possible for married people. Isa grew up Maiha, a town in northern Nigeria, where she attended Lutheran Church of Christ in Pakka. The Archbishop of Nigeria asked her to take this assignment. Isa works in Calumet’s Day Camp, bringing the world to area children.

Isa talks easily and avidly about her country. “Life is very difficult in Nigeria for so many people,” she said. “People die every day from poverty and lack of opportunities.There is no health care. If people are sick, they have to pay themselves and the family has to provide food. The Lutheran Church is a big church in Nigeria and has many ways in which it helps the poor.”

Barz, who recently graduated from high school, hopes to attend college in the fall to major in medicine. She grew up in Bordesholm, Germany, which is near Hamburg. Her father, a Lutheran pastor, has served for 10 years at Evangelisch Lutherische Chrisuskirchergemeinde Bordersholm (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Christ in Bordersholm). Her mother teaches sight impaired students. Her two younger brothers are “happy that I’m in the United States and out of the house!” Barz loves to travel and, in addition to her native German, she speaks and writes fluent English and Swedish.

Her father heard of this program while at the ELCA headquarters in Chicago and encouraged her to participate. At home, she loves working with Sunday school children, and at Calumet she loved Kids Fun Times and beach games with family camper children. And they loved her.

The New England Synod has truly been blessed by the faith and gifts of the many staff who have come to Calumet from around the world these past 15 years. The founders’ dream has, indeed, come true as young adults bring back to their home countries the rich experiences of outdoor ministry from ELCA camps throughout the United States.

Here are the international camp counselors who have served at Calumet since 1993:

1993 – Mary Basta, Egypt
1994 – Kinga Klus, Poland
1995 – Vivian Amer, Palestine
1996 – Rom Paul, Papua New Guinea
1997 – Natalia Jezna, Slovakia
1998 – Salome Makosi, Kenya; Marcel Steurnagel, Brazil; Martina Koverova, Slovakia
1999 – Klara Balicza, Hungary
2000 – Julia Wienkemeir, Germany; Silvia Vasilkova, Slovakia
2001 – Marja Loodma, Estonia
2002 – Betty Gombkoto, Hungary; Jessie Huang, Taiwan
2003 – Kulkanya (Kung) Wongsantichon, Thailand
2005 – Zuzana Tothova, Slovakia
2006 – Huen-Wen Yao, Taiwan
2007 – Rahel Barz, Germany; Adama Idsa, Nigeria