By Lizsandra Trastoy - Florida Catholic Newspaper
Photographer: LIZSANDRA TRASTOY | FC
Volunteers from Peoria's Notre Dame High School and Illinois State University gather outside St. Mary Cathedral School after arriving from a field trip with the summer camp children. There were a total of 50 student volunteers every week, and approximately 10 other chaperones.
MIAMI | Most summer camps feature field trips, fun and games. At St. Mary Cathedral, campers also get a good dose of faith. They attend morning Mass and pray the rosary daily.
“I’m amazed at how well these kids know their religious education,” said Leandro Siqueira, a seminarian who was assigned to St. Mary Cathedral three weeks prior to the start of the summer camp.
He never expected to work with children but noted that the experience “taught me a lot.”
He said the 80 children who enrolled in the camp, which ran from June 8 through July 30, “behave great and are very spiritual.”
Photographer: LIZSANDRA TRASTOY | FC
Student volunteers from Peoria's Notre Dame High School and Illinois State University, perform for the children before the closing of summer camp each day.
“I think it’s because the sisters are like mothers for them,” he said, referring to the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who staff St. Mary School and coordinate its religious education program.
“Hope,” added Siqueira. “I think these kids see hope here in the camp.”
Photographer: LIZSANDRA TRASTOY | FC
Inigo Isla, a member of the Apostles of the Two Hearts who work closely with the Servants of the Pierced Hearts, sports the summer camp T-shirt. Isla, a volunteer from Miami, said he feels like the students from Illinois are “family.”
The idea for the camp originated four years ago with a couple who were visiting Miami. They had just had a baby and asked Sister Michelle Fernandez, St. Mary’s principal, if the school offered a summer camp for Haitian children.
Photographer: LIZSANDRA TRASTOY | FC
Sister Michelle turned to members of her community working in Catholic campus ministry at Illinois State University. She was looking for volunteers and help in creating a lesson plan and activities for the camp.
About 50 students from Illinois State come down each year to help run the camp, and they were joined this year by 100 students from Notre Dame High School in the same Diocese of Peoria. The students took turns coming down, serving one or two weeks at a time.
“One hundred out of 800 of our students took a bus to serve this summer camp, and it was all made possible by the Sisters of the Pierced Hearts,” said Father Adam Stimpson, chaplain at Notre Dame High School, where two of the sisters work.
“Our mission here is to serve the children by showing them love, that they have dignity, and that they are worth the love that we show,” Father Stimpson said.
But just as important, “We want our students at Notre Dame High School to recognize that servicing the community is definitely a part of being fully human and fully alive,” he added. “We want them to be the next future ‘fathers’ and ‘sisters’ of society. They need to know how to be human and be aware of the poor, the less fortunate.”
Inigo Isla, 17, is a member of the Apostles of the Two Hearts, one of the lay groups associated with the Servants. He was born in Mexico but moved to Miami at a young age, after his parents bonded with the sisters and decided they had a calling to help them here. This is Isla’s second year helping at the camp but, despite his age, his eighth overall helping the Servants.
“Even though we may not all know each other, we are all ready to help each other because we are a family,” said Isla, referring to the students from Peoria.
Isla listed some of the camp’s activities, including a religiously themed scavenger hunt where the children try to find religious items and later discuss them in a group. Other camp activities include field trips to water and indoor parks, but the students also are learning English, French, science, math, technology, language and performance arts.
“The kids have lunch and snack time, they later pray the rosary, and finish the day with song and dance,” Isla said. “Our kids are always praying. They pray in the morning, when they get on the bus, during the rosary, and before the camp ends daily.”
Photographer: LIZSANDRA TRASTOY | FC
Posing for a photo outside St. Mary Cathedral School, from left: Father Adam Stimpson from Notre Dame High School in Peoria, Ill., with volunteers Joey Dixon, Mick Faley, George Jacob, Inigo Isla, and Sister Sara Kowal from the Servants of the Pierced Hearts, who works as a campus minister at the high school.
