Transitional Deacon Nick Vance spent summers during high school serving a series of middle school student groups from Chicago spending a week at Dunrovin Retreat Center north of Stillwater. About 15 years ago, retreat center executive director Jerome Meeds started a summer camp program for “fairly underprivileged” youth who wouldn’t normally have the chance to participate, Deacon Vance said.
The retreat center has a partnership with the students’ school; students attend camp at no cost “and the high schoolers help give them a wonderful week of camp in the process,” Deacon Vance said. After completing high school, Deacon Vance served as a counselor-director for the Dunrovin Leadership Intensive Training Experience, known as DLITE. He recently joined “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley to discuss the camp, which continues today.
At Dunrovin, the middle school students experience being out in green space, out in nature, jumping in a lake, “something they’ve never done before” and being in “a safe haven,” Deacon Vance said. Many of the students live in a Chicago neighborhood called Back of the Yards, which is “kind of a rough neighborhood,” he said. “For them to have … this beautiful safe space with these high school students who want to be with them and have fun and bring them closer to the Lord,” he said, “it’s a beautiful thing.”
By the end of the week, the middle school students are trying things they wouldn’t have experienced before, such as jumping off the end of a dock into the lake, Deacon Vance said. Any “awkward insecurity” can transform into “healthy stepping outside of yourself and having fun with your friends in the process,” he said. “It’ this beautiful thing of opening up and seeing that there’s so much more to life.”
Deacon Vance recalled starting at camp as a 14-year-old volunteer who questioned his gifts once he learned more about the camp. “You want to send awkward little me out there and use my gifts? Like, wait, you think I have gifts?” Meeds always responded “absolutely,” Deacon Vance recalled. “He recognizes the potential in every single person.” For a 14-year-old to hear that his life has meaning, has impact and “your life is not about you,” Deacon Vance said, “something entered my heart then that I don’t think (has) ever left.”
To learn whether the camp experience influenced his decision to become a priest, listen to this episode of “Practicing Catholic,” which debuts at 9 p.m. Aug. 18 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM and repeats at 1 p.m. Aug. 19 and 2 p.m. Aug. 20.
To learn more about and support the camp’s program, visit dunrovin.org.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes an interview with Nicole Bettini, the new delegate for consecrated life for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who describes life as a consecrated virgin; and Simon Pick, director of music and liturgy at Assumption in St. Paul, who discusses the role of music in our liturgies and our faith.
Listen to interviews after they have aired at PracticingCatholicShow.com or choose a streaming platform at anchor.fm/practicing-catholic-show.
