Every year, you can find the summer staff at Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega hard at work through the busy summer months. This year, however, staffers extended their hard work way past Shocco Springs to another Baptist camp — in Guatemala.
The missions trip to Guatemala marked the first time the staff has taken an overseas trip as part of Shocco’s summer program. It also bolstered the state convention’s partnership with Baptists in Guatemala and Shocco’s relationship with Guatemala’s Campamento Bautista El Eden, or Camp Eden.
According to summer staff pastor Cory Horton, the idea of summer staffers taking on missions projects was a natural progression.
“We thought doing missions work away from Shocco would give them the idea that they are doing missions here (at Shocco),” Horton said.
Staffers kicked off the missions projects two summers ago by doing work in the Talladega area.
In early August, the 12-person Guatemala team — 10 of whom were summer staffers — worked at Camp Eden in Santiago, painting the swimming pool, repairing the pool pump and moving dirt in preparation for building a basketball court.
In addition to working at the camp, the team joined Guatemalan women who regularly travel to remote villages with no church to share their testimonies and baskets of food.
Horton said the area — including the camp — is still recovering from devastating mudslides resulting from Hurricane Stan in October 2005.
The team also passed out health packets and Spanish tracts and did recreation activities in local public schools. Summer staffer Mary Elise Duckworth said working in the schools was her favorite part of the trip.
“Getting to play with the children in schools and going into the villages to share testimonies were great experiences,” she said.
The Tennessee Baptist enjoyed her first summer on the Shocco staff. “I loved the work and getting to go to Guatemala was a great bonus.”
Summer staffer Tara Burke, a member of First Baptist Church, Hamilton, in Marion Baptist Association, said she was moved by the team members’ work ministering with and through their translator, who told them that her faith grew as she worked with them that week.
“We were God’s hands and feet but she was our words,” Burke said.
In addition to sending the team to Guatemala, Shocco also sent construction teams to Bayou La Batre and Pascagoula, Miss., to help with continuing rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Katrina, which hit in August 2005.
The teams painted, hung siding, moved furniture and did whatever else was needed June 28–30 in Pascagoula and July 13–15 in Bayou La Batre.
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