Royal Family Kids Camp

This summer, August 7th - 12th, A Jesus Church Family is hosting Royal Family Kids' Camp. Royal Family Kids' Camp is a one week camp that serves children ages 7-11 who are in the foster care system. It's an amazing opportunity to create positive memories and share Jesus and his love with those who most need it. This will be our fifth year hosting a camp, and we need your support.

 How you can help?

It costs approximately $1100 for 1 child to attend camp for the week. That includes lodging, food, transportation and all the activities that go along with camp.

Here is some more information on what we do with Royal Family Kids Camp

"Royal Family Kids is the largest network of camps in America focused on kids experiencing abuse and neglect.  Over 7,000 kids from the foster care system show up each year to 197 camps spread out over 38 states and 3 different countries! Hear the Cry has sponsored a Royal Family Kids Camp in Washington County for the past 5 years and during that time hundreds of volunteers have had a front row seat to watch broken, hurt children meet a loving, healing God.

We build our camp around the concept of family, something that has negative connotations with all of these kids.  Our God is all about redeeming what is broken and we watch him work in these kids’ lives to make family a word that brings a smile to their faces rather than retreat into their shells.  At camp we have Camp Aunts, Uncles, Grandmas, and Grandpas as well as Counsellors who play the part of parents.  We also try to have at least twice as many staff as kids, which translates into these kids always having the complete attention of multiple adults. This comes as a breath of fresh air to many of these kids who feel invisible to their own families during the rest of the year.

We believe that families should laugh a lot and have a good time hanging out together, so naturally this is a priority at Royal Family Kids Camp!  Each year our goal is to make our week with these kids the best week of their lives!  We have done all types of activities ranging from a dress up station to hot air balloon rides, from a beauty parlor to renting out water parks, from food coloring water fights to life-sized Candyland board games – everything we do, we do big!  Before camp each year we ask, “What is the craziest, coolest thing that kids 7-11 years old want to do?” And these are the things we make reality.

We also believe that families should celebrate.  Each year at camp we have a birthday celebration!  Many kids come to camp never having celebrated their birthdays, so we throw a giant party for everyone.  From individualized cupcakes to giant boxes of presents to a piñata forest, we make sure to create the ultimate birthday experience!  At the end of the week we celebrate with everyone by having a formal banquet!  We bring dress clothes, shoes, and jewelry for all of the kids, and the staff all bring their own dress clothes.  While the ladies are at the beauty parlor, we run the guys through an etiquette class which is followed by a group carriage ride to a formal banquet.  We treat them like royalty because in our eyes and in Gods’, they are.

When all is said and done, camp is so much more than a week full of surprises and laughter.  We want the kids to enjoy the activities, but our ultimate hope is that they have an encounter with God.  We firmly believe that this one week – full of God encounters – will change their lives and give them hope and freedom.

The week at camp is best described as the worst, best week of your life.  You will experience physical exhaustion, you will hear stories from these kids that are full of evil, but you also see hope begin to ignite within them.  Thye kids come to camp scared and confused and hardly recognizable as children, but they leave with smiles and stories of how God overcomes evil with good and a hope that the evil that has been done to them can be undone by their true Father."

This year camp will be held on August 7th - 12th, 2016 at a secret location