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Aug 22, 2013 | Sharon Sheridan

ENS: Bilingual Summer Camp Brings Together Two Congregations

bilingual story
Art instructor Hannah Kraft, second from left, helps
students in the pottery studio at the St. Peter’s
bilingual Bible camp. Photo: Courtesy of St. Peter’s

[Episcopal News Service] This is the story of two congregations, two languages and one teen who helped bring them together to launch a new ministry.

 

Seventeen-year-old Hannah Kraft of Morristown, New Jersey, loves Spanish. Two years ago, she took a Spanish-immersion course in Costa Rica. Last summer, she attended “a really rigorous program” in California. When she returned, she said, “I wanted to maintain the Spanish that I had learned.”

 

So Kraft joined the teen Bible study at Principe de Paz, a nondenominational congregation of mostly Guatemalans and Hondurans that for three years has rented worship space at her parish, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown. She hoped to keep up her language skills, plus she was curious.

 

“They were always this sort of mysterious church that came in,” she said. “I wanted to know who they were and what they were really up to.”

 

Kraft discovered a group of teens very serious about their faith and more comfortable sharing it publicly than those in the St. Peter’s youth group.

 

“These kids were so different; they really liked talking about how they felt,” Kraft said. “They’re very serious about their beliefs. They’re not messing around.”

 

“The kids are really sweet and down-to-earth,” she said. “It was scary speaking Spanish in front of them.” The teacher, Lesly Zuluaga, would “just call on people, so you really had to participate. She broke the barrier.”

 

Kraft hoped she might help some of the other students with English but learned they all spoke English well. Some of their parents, however, needed help. So she and Zuluaga launched a Friday-evening class teaching English as a second language, beginning with five adults. They adapted the curriculum to meet the needs of their students – some of whom were illiterate – and focused on practical language skills such as identifying yourself, writing your address, providing insurance numbers.

 

More and more students started coming, as many as 30 in a class. Kraft helped run a training class for 30 members of St. Peter’s, where her mother, the Rev. Janet Broderick, is rector. A handful joined the program as tutors.

 

“The relationship with Principe de Paz got tighter and tighter. Eventually we said, ‘What do we want to do for the summer?’” Kraft said. The adult students wished for a place for their children to go during the summer, since they couldn’t afford to send them to local day camps.

 

Leaders of the two congregations met to discuss the idea, and the St. Peter’s bilingual vacation Bible camp was born.

 

“We came up with the idea that it would be a nice way to help the community, especially the low-income families in the Hispanic community,” said Zuluaga, one of the camp organizers. “We thought this would be a great idea to have the kids learn and at the same time be part of a social group instead of being at home.”

 

St. Peter’s received a $20,000 grant from the Simon Foundation and another $2,000 from the F.M. Kirby Foundation. The church hosted a camp plus before and after care for nearly 50 children each weekday from July 8-Aug. 2. An additional $5,000 Simon challenge grant provided three day trips a week during the first two weeks in August, said camp Director Dee Klikier, St. Peter’s facilities manager and a former elementary school principal.

 

Read the rest of the story at ENS