Camp Saint Sava 2017 in Jackson, CA
SAINT SAVA CAMP SEASON 2017
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
I can’t wait to come to Jackson again:’ “I wish I could see my friends from the Camp more often;’ “The fragrance I smelled at the reliquary with Saint Sebastian’s holy relics was the most beautiful in my life – I will have to show it to my family when they come to take me from the Camp.” What is it in the Saint Sava Camp in Jackson, California, that inspires the children to make these and similar enthusiastic comments? In our age of individualism, loneliness, crisis of family and marriage, relativization of moral values, addiction to social networks, even only a week spent in a Christ-centered community has a profound impact on their young and tender souls. They feel free to be who they are, to love and to be loved. Their days start and end with a prayer and then everything they do in the meantime-play, dance, sing, eat, do arts and crafts or go to a field trip – receives its true meaning and importance. The main theme of this year’s camp season was “Krsna Slava;’ and so the classes in religion, music, and arts and crafts revolved around this interesting topic, which posed a challenge of understanding that tradition is not simply preserving the inherited customs, but rather understanding them and their spirit and expressing them in our own time and among the people who surround us. Surprisingly, our children do not need or miss much their phones during their time in the Camp, because they do not need any substitute, electronic, virtual relationships besides the real, living relationships they enjoy in the Camp. They get a chance to experience God as the loving, merciful Father, who cannot wait to embrace them when they come to meet Him in the Holy Confession. Their unity in dining at the same room, in playing at the same field and in dancing the same kolo has the same source and the same crown-the Holy Communion. Without the Eucharist there is no Church, there is no Camp, there is no Life. Our Camp is based on the Eucharist and Divine Liturgy and everything else that takes place in it is an extension of them and hence it overflows with life, joy and laughter.
Thanks be to the parents who sent their children to the Camp, for they have understood and taken to their hearts the words of our holy father Saint John Chrysostom: “We are so concerned with our children’s schooling [ and worldly success]; if only we were equally zealous in bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord … This, then, is our task: to educate both ourselves and our children in godliness; otherwise what answer will we have before Christ’s judgment-seat?” If you haven’t been able to send your kids to the Camp under Saint Sava’s and Saint Sebastian’s protection, please do so in 2018 and you will not regret it, just as all of us who come there from year to year over and over again do not regret it. Moreover, it is a time when we adults in return get spiritually and physically refreshed, rejuvenated, inspired and taught by our children and by the life in a Serbian Orthodox community. Prota Dusan Bunjevic came this year to the Camp for the 54th time, with the same enthusiasm he had while he was driving to the Camp in Jackson all the way from Gary, Indiana, or while he was staying for six weeks in the Camp while he was the parish priest in San Francisco. He is an6 other great inspiration, together with His Grace Bishop Maxim, who every year, despite his busy schedule, spends a significant amount of time in the Camp and inspires with his love for children and dedication to their upbringing in our faith and ethos. Prota Stevan Tumbas, who although retired helped significantly the preparation for the Camp season and who marked a whole era in the development of the Saint Sava Camp, Mission and Church in Jackson, all the priests: Djurica Gordie, Dane Popovic, Radovan Petrovic, Milan Unkovic, Bratislav Krsic, Dragomir Tuba, Predrag Bojovic, George Gligic, Milovan Katanic, Russell Radoicich, and Norman Kosanovich, deacons Triva Pavlov and Dragan Stojanovich, with their families and parishioners, all the lay directors: Pavle Bunjevic, Krstina Pavlovich and Jonathan Savic, and Steve Spilker (mentored by Nick Salata), main cooks: Gigi Medan, Dawn Pavlovich, and Simona Trifunovich, together with all other wonderful instructors, councilors, kitchen crew members, supporters from Jackson community and all across the Diocese, were all driven by the same beautiful and holy purpose to contribute, according to their personal talents and characteristics, to the Saint Sava Camp.
God’s providence together with the founders’ vision chose the place of our first Serbian Orthodox church in North America and of the holy relics of its founder, the first US-born Orthodox Christian monk and priest and equal-to-the-apostles saint, Sebastian of Jackson, to be the place where our children will be able to connect past and future, tradition and modernity, guided by the saint who himself was able to do it by being one with Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.
Respectfully submitted,
Rev. Marko Bojovic, Camp Director
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