“Would you like to counsel the same girls you did last year?”
“Yes!” was my immediate reply.
I could not believe that I got to be with the same girls again, at Kids Camp, in Payson, Arizona.
A week before I left, I packed, bought gifts for the girls in my cabin, and got excited for what was in store. I could not wait to continue building my relationships with the girls.

Finally, the day had come to leave for Payson and begin my journey. I arrived at Mountain Meadows Ranch in three hours, and at one o’clock all the kids began to show up. I could feel my emotions become nervous. I had to calm myself down to breathe. After a majority of my cabin arrived, we were still missing one girl; she was late. Her name was Maye. Maye was a hyper, blonde, excited fifth grader. When she saw me, she ran up to me and gave me a hug so tight my back popped. Maye had seemed to always look up to me, but I never understood why because she had older siblings.

As the week went on she grew more attached to me, each day. She would sit on my lap and beg for piggy-back rides; although I am sure that this was nothing new, she did the same the year before as well. I could tell that she trusted me, so I trusted her in return.

One night during the week, while we were all asleep, I heard a thump. Sure enough it was Maye; she had fallen off the top of her bunk bed. I jumped out of my bed to make sure she was alright. She was awake, but she was so sleepy that she had not realized what had happened. I holstered her back up on her bed, the way a mother would and she fell back asleep. At that moment, I realized that for the week we were spending together, I was a partial mother to the girls in my cabin. They looked up to me and expected me not to fail them. Before the camp, my supervision had told me that a teenage counselor is someone who will have a vast impact on the kids that I will be “in charge of” what she did not tell me though was that I would have such an impact on one person.

After camp was over Maye and I continued our relationship. I worked with her again at vacation Bible school. She was doing a craft and wrote on it, that I was her hero. She wrote that I was her hero because I helped her through hard times in her life and that she is thankful that I have always been there for her. When I saw it my eyes filled with tears knowing that I had made a difference in someone’s life and that she would remember it forever.

I still see Maye every Sunday, on those days we get to talk to ech other and make jokes and give hugs until I have to leave, and I plan on continuing to work with Maye and the other girls that were in my cabin in the future and I plan on being their counselor again this summer.