Copyright © 2006 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee

"Happening" dates are November 3-5 (All Saints weekend), and the event will be held at the Episcopal School of Knoxville. Watch for registration forms in mid-September.

The diocesan youth Web pages have moved! Watch www.etnyouth.org for exciting new features, including audio and video and discussion forums.

photos by Sharon Rasmussen

At right, participants in the art camp at St. Matthew, Dayton, join hands with preschool teacher Eileen Carter to sing and dance to "Rejoice in the Lord Always" as they prepare for the day.

By Emily McDonald
South East Area ETE Correspondent

Art was the focus of a five-day camp held at St. Matthew, Dayton in June, but the end product was much more than artwork.

The camp attracted campers and parents from outside the parish family, and it created a strong bond among children, youth and adults within the church and beyond. Only six of the 30 campers, who ranged in age from 13 months to 17 years, were from St. Matthew.

"Art Camp became a community project in which over 50 people participated, and a great time was had by all," Ellie Pickett wrote in the parish newsletter, the Ex Publican.

Volunteer helper and mom Sharon Hilliard helps preschoolers at the art camp work with a shaving cream-glue mixture to make puffy pictures. Each child developed his or her own style of finger painting, scratching and blending the gooey substance.

"Miss Ellie" is senior warden, developer of the camp and an art teacher at Bledsoe County High School. "It was one of the best weeks of my life," said Destiny Daughtrey, 14. "I made a basket that was really cool." The first camp, last year, drew 10 campers. Word-of-mouth brought more campers this year than did an announcement in the local newspaper. "I heard about it from Miss Ellie," said Heather Brooks, 13. Eileen Carter, a teacher at Griffin Elementary School in Dayton, taught preschoolers in one class this year, and Pickett taught the rest. Both groups focused on the major events in Joseph's life. The approach, however, varied with the group.

Carter had the preschoolers create pictures from shaving cream and glue, make stained glass hand prints and craft Joseph's coats from paper bags.

Pickett gathered the older group in the nave each morning and, dressed in a purple robe, headband and sandals, told portions of Joseph's story through words and movements. After the session on the final day of camp, Chris Akina, 12, commented, "that was an awesome story."

Both groups worked on storybooks about the tale, but the books created by the older group were larger and much more elaborate. After the telling of the day's story, older campers were asked to illustrate what they had heard. The artwork was hung on a clothesline until the last day, when it was pasted into books along with the scriptural text. The books were then assembled by adult volunteers, bound by Pickett's husband, Jack, and covered with wallpaper "binding." During the week the campers also tie-dyed shirts, wove baskets and painted gourds. They had learning and recreational activities outside and enjoyed meals and snacks on the patio.

Preschooler Julian shows she's finished with her lunch. St. Matthew, Dayton, fed the art campers breakfast and lunch each day, as well as a snack at day's end.

Parishioner Dawn Sullivan, whose daughter Tina was a camper, was the chief cook and bottle washer and provided breakfast, lunch and a snack each day.

Parents and parishioners "donated time, desserts and money all week," Sullivan said. The number of campers took parishioners by surprise, she said, and when a substantial portion of the week's pre-made banana bread disappeared the first day, she wondered if they would run out of food. But a local grocer and others donated food, and somehow, all week, there was plenty - ending in a cook-out for "parents and anybody else" who wanted to come, Sullivan said.

On the last day of art camp, the older participants cluster around instructor and St. Matthew Senior Warden Ellie Pickett as she fills their palettes with paint. At left, Winter and Lauren brush paint onto the gourds they had washed and prepped with a white coat of paint earlier in the week.

photos by Mary Rhoades

At right, Appalachian summer campers examine the kits and sleeping bags they were given to take home from their camp experience at Grace Point Camp and Retreat Center.

By Mary Rhoades and Harry Chase

The 2006 Creative Arts Porgram sponsored by the Mountain Women's Exchange was a resounding success! We had 26 children ages 7 through 12 from the Jellico Elementary School each day July 10-21. The children were very enthusiastic and committed to attending each day's activities.

Frieda Chitwood, a local artist, spent a day teaching the children drawing and acrylic painting, including how to organize a paint palette and mix colors. The end result was a burst of creative expression of color and form in each finished painting.

The outreach committees of St. Paul's and St. Martin's Episcopal churches in Chattanooga and a grant from the Episcopal Church funded the program. The staff of Jellico High School cooked breakfast and lunch. The United Methodist Church in Jellico provided inside space for breakfast and for arts and crafts. The church also provided the parish house as living quarters for camp leaders Patty and Harry Chase so they didn't have to drive 150 miles each day from Knoxville. The extra time allowed them to prepare for the next day's activities.

The group went on field trips to the Children's Museum in Oak Ridge and to Kentucky Splash. Indian Mountain State Park provided a place to swim, take nature walks, picnic and paddleboat. Donations also provided swimming passes to the children for the summer.

The third week was organized to allow the children in the third through sixth grade to attend a summer camp designed just for them at Grace Point Camp and Retreat Center. The regular summer camp staff stayed on for this camp, and a group of Appalachian Ministries Resource Team members worked with the Appalachian camp organizers, the Rev. Canon Stephen Askew and his wife, Patricia Tanzer Askew.

The theme was "Neighbor to Neighbor," emphasizing that neighbors are not just people next door but also those we meet, animals and the environment. Campers drew names for a secret neighbor, which led to making a prayer chain and lots of small treasures and notes being exchanged. The theme also was played out with various retellings and skits of the Good Samaritan story. Secret neighbors were revealed at camp's end, and the Rev. Kay Reynolds blessed the campers.

Other camp fun included lots of swimming, boating, singing, fishing, games, slippery sliding, nature walks, campfires with s'mores and craft activities. Each camper went home with a camp shirt, a small toiletry kit and a sleeping bag - as well as a great many memories and promises to "come back next year."

Above, Appalachian Ministries Resource Team chairman Bill Fryar and Appalachian camper Monica enjoy their pontoon-boat ride of the shore of Grace Point Camp and Retreat Center on Watts Bar Lake.

By Anne Bright

At right, participants in the "Mountain to Mountain" trip to Washington, D.C., watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.

This summer, Mountain to Mountain, a ministry of Good Shepherd, Lookout Mountain, traveled to Washington, D.C., as part of the diocese's Appalachian Ministries. The trip was made possible by many parishes whose members gave generously to sponsor 24 middle and high school-aged children and four adults from Campbell County, a rural area faced with problems including extreme poverty, disintegrating families, drug addiction, sexual abuse and violence. Mountain to Mountain seeks to provide seeds of hope and moments of relief for some of the area's children.

"For many, it was their first time to leave the area, and they were so excited about the trip," said Carolyn Doster, who started the Mountain to Mountain ministry more than four years ago. Many of the families from Good Shepherd who went on the trip have been involved in the ministry from the very beginning, Doster said, so that they have been able to build ongoing relationships with many of the Campbell County children and adults.

Mountain to Mountain supports and supplements the work of Tonia Brookman at the Woodland Community Trust and the work of Patty and Harry Chase from St. James, Knoxville, who work extensively with families in the area. In addition to offering direct relief in the form of food and clothing and school supplies, Mountain to Mountain has hosted the group for weekend trips to visit the museums and sites in Chattanooga and created vacation Bible schools and camps for the children in Campbell County and at Grace Point.

"This year," Doster said, "We wanted to do something more for the older kids, to really give them a chance to broaden their horizons by taking them to our nation's capital." A condition was set, she said; they had to commit to staying in school and making good grades.

The two groups met at St. James, where they were joined by Patty Chase. They traveled first to Monticello, then to Mt. Vernon and on to Washington.

Highlights of the trip included a tour of the Capitol Building with Congressman Zach Wamp of Tennessee's third congressional district, watching a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives and seeing the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The group also happened to be visiting the Jefferson Memorial during a rehearsal for the "Twilight Tattoo," a military pageant that features soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) troop units and ceremonial units, the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps, and the U.S. Army's drill team, blues jazz ensemble and chorus and chorale vocalists. They performed a salute to each state in the union, and everyone cheered loudly as they saluted Tennessee.

Early in the planning process, Doster was put in touch in Ken Brewster, a teacher at the Baylor School in Chattanooga who has led many student trips to D.C. Doster said she called to ask advice, but he offered to go on the trip and lead them through it.

"We were truly blessed to have Ken on the trip," Doster said. "Not only did he help us with the logistics of the trip such as where to stay and eat, where to go and how much time to allot for the various sites, he also acted as a wonderful tour guide, often giving us historical perspective and a context for what we were seeing."

She said the ministry has been as much a broadening experience for those from Good Shepherd as for those they seek to serve. All the youth had fun together, seeing the city and interacting with one another on the bus or in their rooms at night. "We all learn so much from each other and truly enjoy each other," Doster said.

"The long bus rides were great for getting to know the kids better," she added. "We were able to spend time with them, to learn about some of the challenges they face in their lives and hopefully to offer them some encouragement."

Cory, a seventh-grader from Campbell County, said her favorite part was seeing Thomas Jefferson's home and his memorial in Washington, and that she also loved meeting her new best friend, Lizzie, from Good Shepherd.

"One of my favorite experiences ever was going to the National Gallery of Art with [Campbell County youth] Tiara, Marianne, and Haley," said Good Shepherd member Marshall, 17. "These kids had never been to a real art museum before, and it was really neat to see them respond to the work. ... We looked at some old paintings and talked about perspective and how it hadn't been invented yet and how to tell the old stuff from the newer stuff.

"Next we went to the National Archives, and they were SO engrossed by some of the stuff, like the part that allows you to look at Nuremburg trial documents through a computer, or where you can look at amendments and signatures of presidents," she said.

Others said they couldn't say which they had enjoyed more, getting to see and experience so many new things or having made so many new friends, but they all agreed that the trip was amazing.

Mountain to Mountain participants watch as an artist replicates a painting in the National Gallery of Art.

By Emily McDonald
South East Area ETE Correspondent

For two days in June, young people at St. Paul, Chattanooga, stepped out of the comfort zone of their everyday teenaged lives into the lives of the elderly, the homeless and the physically challenged.

More than 30 youths ages 13 and up made mission stops at the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, St. Catherine and St. Matthew's night shelters and the Hosanna Community. They spent two nights at the church and participated in worship, games and other activities during their free time.

"Missionpalooza" was a community service project devised and led by the Rev. Ben Nelson, assistant at St. Paul's - with a lot of help from parishioners who served as chaperones, provided food, transportation and other support.

The experience was "a real eye-opener," said John Michael Geeslin, 17. "You hear about it (the work of the agencies), but it doesn't mean much until you see it."

"We talked about what we're grateful for," said Evan Sharber, 17. He found the work done at Hosanna Community, a facility to enable the physically disabled to lead independent lives, "pretty amazing."

Nelson had done this type of community service project with young people in the past, and he felt the group at St. Paul was ready for a similar project. "The most obvious place for me to start was the Community Kitchen because of Brother Ron," he said. (Brother Ron Fender is a member of St. Paul and is outreach case manager for the Kitchen.)

"We organized a closet and rearranged a room in the Homeless Health Care Center," Sharber said.

Nelson also wanted the group to know about Hosanna Community and to discover they could really be helpful at the Food Bank. For example, the youths washed trucks at the latter agency.

"It's been fun," said Kathryn Seiferth, 17. "This is more involved than our youth group has ever been, and I like it."

Chaperone Alice Smith, a senior at the University of Mississippi, agreed. "When I was going through high school, there were maybe four our age. They are all so close."

Another college student, Kyle Tallman, who is in his fourth year at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, provided guitar music for worship. Tallman "has a great ability to get the kids to have fun" and then to inject Jesus, Nelson said.

At the end of the second day Tallman asked, "what was the coolest thing?" and got answers ranging from the truck wash to taking a break at the Tennessee River Park - amid a hailstorm.

At the same session Nelson said, "you guys have done a lot, the idea of really stepping outside your normal lives. You took another kind of risk, loving your neighbor as yourself. It's risky to care about people."

The final activity of Missionpalooza also involved a risk of an entirely different nature. The young people and chaperones spent a day whitewater rafting on the Ocoee River.

"It was a reward for hard work in the community," Nelson said.