I just wanted to pass along a good story about the May House youth on their recent camp trip to Clear Lake, Manitoba. 

The youth from May House stayed at the Onanole Campground and RV Park. During the stay our youth helped the camp ground owners (Rick and Lorna) with some of the maintenance and grounds keeping. The youth would get up every morning and help rick clean the pool, hot tub, washrooms etc. Youth also helped cut fire wood for other sites and picked up beer cans and bottles that other campers had left behind. This was not planned but the staff and youth decided that they wanted to help out as both Rick and Lorna were very friendly and tried to accommodate any requests that May House had. 

There were also a older couple whom stayed in the site right next to May House named Harold and Dianna. They asked lots of questions about where we were from, what the group was doing, etc. The May House youth were often seen playing on the playground with other families and youth from the camp ground. Often times the May House youth would invite the other youth over to our site for snacks or activities. The May House kids made friends with a family that had a pet parrot named Kionga that had a 150 word vocabulary*. Throughout the camp the May House youth were very accepted by all others campers and represented themselves and Ranch Ehrlo in a exemplary manner. 

On about day ten of the camp, Harold and Dianna brought a gift to the May House site as the youth were getting out of bed - f resh baked cinnamon buns and a donation of $500 to be added to the house's work fund. The youth were shocked at this generosity and very thankful as it allowed them to do more activities. Some discussion was had on passing some of the money on to others in need. It was decided that May House will use a portion to adopt a family during the Christmas season.

On the last day of camp, Rick and Lorna also refunded half of the camp rental amount for all the hard work and friendly attitudes the youth had shown over the past two weeks. Rick explained that this money was to keep the camping program going strong in the future.

Just a good story about how our youth's positive attitudes affected those around them in the camp site. 

* When a dog would bark in the campground, Kionga the parrot would tell the dogs to “shut up”.  The kids loved this.  On one occasion it also told Jon, a Ranch staff member, to also “shut up”.  You guessed it…the kids loved this also.

Guest Blogger Cam Banning is a unit manager at May House located in Corman Park just outside of Saskatoon.