Counselors in three large inflatable dinosaur costumes paraded across the stage at St. John’s School in Hollywood, Maryland. A counselor in an enormous white chicken costume joined them beneath a banner that read, “Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church.”
On the floor below, a gymnasium full of children watched.
It was morning at St. John’s Summer Program at St. John Francis Regis Parish, and the campers had already been to Mass. Now came the morning show: songs, skits, jokes, costumes and the particular kind of organized absurdity that can hold the attention of a gym full of children during summer vacation.
Then a familiar song began.
“I want to say ‘yes,’ just like Mary,” they sang.
Before the first lyric appeared on the screen, all around the gym, hands went up.
The teenagers and college students stationed around the room knew the motions by heart. They clapped and swayed with the music. Some of the youngest campers barely noticed the screen because their eyes were glued to their counselors. A counselor lifted her arms. A row of children lifted theirs. The counselors clapped. The children clapped.
They knew where to look.
When the morning show ended, the dinosaurs disappeared backstage, the white chicken went with them, and the gym emptied into the rest of the campus. The children scattered into classrooms and kitchens, across fields and into the woods.
In Minecraft Camp, computer keys clicked beneath small hands as children built blocky cities. Outside, lacrosse sticks cracked against plastic balls while counselors jogged backward across the grass, calling out instructions.
Down the hall, the school’s industrial kitchen smelled of lemons, butter, vanilla and blueberries. Children wearing aprons stood shoulder to shoulder around stainless-steel worktables dusted with flour. Halved lemons rolled between mixing bowls. Some of the bowls were nearly as large as the children stirring them.
One girl paused to lick a ribbon of batter from her finger. Another held an egg with both hands, concentrating on the small problem of breaking the shell without sending pieces of it into the batter. Beside her, a counselor showed how to fold blueberries into the mixture. The ovens hummed along the wall.
By the end of the session, the children would have muffins to share with their families: lemons squeezed, eggs cracked, flour measured, batter stirred by their own hands.
Outside, barking carried from Puppy Camp.
Rescue puppies from Operation Paws for Homes crossed the wood-chip enclosure in the loose, spring-loaded hop-skip-bounce of the very young. The children moved among them, scratching behind their ears, offering chew toys, settling the smaller ones into their laps.
Six-year-old Abigail Anderson had already chosen her favorite, a puppy named Owen.
“I’m going to adopt him,” she announced.
A few of the puppies climbed eagerly into waiting arms. Others kept a careful distance, circling bright Crocs and light-up sneakers, sniffing at fingers held out in their direction.
Nearby, another child leaned toward a puppy that had stopped just beyond his reach. A counselor told the child to wait.
“Let him come to you,” she said.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the puppy crossed the space between them.
Scenes like these unfold across St. John’s for eight weeks each summer. About 350 campers arrive each week, ages 4 through 14, choosing among camps devoted to sports, cooking, art, technology, animals and the outdoors.
Each day begins with Mass and the morning show, followed by camps and a closing show. When the campers head home, staff members and volunteers gather for theology, Eucharistic Adoration and an end-of-day meeting.
Many linger in the staff lounge. A stocked refrigerator and a large leather sectional give them a place to settle and talk. By midafternoon, it can become one of the busiest rooms on campus.
Each summer, the program employs about 65 to 70 college undergraduates and high school seniors. They arrive three weeks before the first camper, preparing activities and readying the campus. Over the years, they have planted more than 100 trees, installed pollinator and berry gardens, cleared wooded areas and built treehouses and storage sheds.
As “summer missionaries,” they are expected to give their summer to God, lead others to Christ and model the Catholic faith.
Another 25 to 40 teens in grades eight through 11 serve as volunteers through the Leader in Training program (LIT), working under older instructors.
In Minecraft Camp, the children have raced to build cathedrals. On the fields, a missed catch becomes a short lesson in sportsmanship. In the middle of an activity, a counselor tells the children about a conversation he had with Jesus that morning.
Campers call the staff by name. A teenager refills a water bottle and bumps fists with a child passing by. Another drops to one knee to listen at eye level to a story delivered with the full gravity of someone announcing important news. A counselor demonstrates the bunny loop on an untied shoe. Another remembers something a camper told her the summer before.
The child’s eyes widen. “You remember that!”
Maria Northrup first came to St. John’s when she was 4 and remembers what it felt like to be one of the youngest campers.
“Aftercare could be scary when it was your first time,” she said. “I remember one day I was crying because I forgot my lunchbox or couldn’t open my locker. One of the instructors helped me.”
“It was something so simple, but it’s still one of my core memories,” she said. “It’s the little things.”
She also watched her older brothers and their friends work at the camp.
“I saw how much it changed their lives, and that made me want to come back,” Northrup said.
She did. First as a volunteer, and now as a high school senior on staff.
Carlton Costanzo, a senior at Chesterton Academy of St. Mary’s, is considering several paths after high school, including the priesthood.
“What really makes a difference for me is meeting young priests and seminarians here who are rooted in the Church’s traditions and close enough to my age that I can relate to them,” he said.
Each year, local families open spare bedrooms and basements to 8 to 15 college students. The arrangement draws host families into the community, too.
Rich Olon, the parish’s director of religious education and youth ministry, said he has heard families tell him, “My whole family’s changed because we have these three guys in the basement.”
Carmen Davidson came from Baylor University in Texas after a friend who had grown up attending St. John’s encouraged her to apply.
“There’s so much power in invitation,” Davidson said.
For Betsy Pieniadz, the invitation traveled all the way to New Mexico, where she nearly ignored it. Her older sister, a student at Ave Maria University in Florida, encouraged her to apply after hearing friends talk about St. John’s.
“I didn’t want to work at this camp,” Pieniadz said. “But the opportunity kept coming back. I don’t know what in me said yes. But I did. Then I came here and met people who really lived their faith.”
“I’ve never been so genuinely happy in my entire life,” she said. “For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel genuinely happy. I can feel God’s presence in a way I’ve never experienced.”
“I never wanted to go to church before,” she said. “Now daily Mass is my favorite part of the day.”
Olon has shaped much of that culture. In 2010, after practicing law for 20 years, he approached Father Raymond Schmidt, pastor of St. John Francis Regis Parish, with the idea for the summer program.
“It’s a lot easier to get up in the morning when you’re working for more than money,” he said.
“You need priest support. One hundred percent,” he said. “The most important thing for a camp is the priest. It doesn’t work without him.”
When asked what had made the program successful, Father Schmidt pointed to Olon’s faith.
“His absolute reliance on God,” Father Schmidt said. “This is God’s kingdom. And if God wants it to thrive, then God will do so.”
Before camp opens, new and returning staff members spend three days camping together. They cook, attend Mass, spend time in Eucharistic Adoration and get to know one another. Olon and Father Schmidt began the retreat after noticing one summer the staff had split into two groups: returning counselors and newcomers.
“They come back best friends,” Olon said.
Counselors are encouraged to attend at least two after-work events each week, including volleyball games, pool parties, beach outings, bonfires, barn dances and guys’ and girls’ nights.
“Without the after-work events, it’s just a job,” Olon said. “Jobs end. Relationships end when the job ends. We want to build friendships grounded in Christ that last well beyond camp.”
“Having a monthly or weekly teen club wasn’t working,” Father Schmidt said. “Young people were dropping off. We learned how important real community was. Once we built that kind of community, they formed incredible friendships with one another.”
Families frequently tell Olon they can feel the joy in the hallways.
“The staff is just joyful, and they tie that to Catholicism,” he said.
Christopher Damron, 19, another staff member who grew up at St. John’s, moved from camper to volunteer to instructor. This summer, home from Ave Maria University, he returned as a groundskeeper.
“One of the hardest parts of my new role is not being able to spend time with the kids,” Damron said. “I miss seeing the joy the kids have when they come here.”
“Every day is a new adventure. It’s been a huge blessing in my life,” said Rachel Mroz, a recent graduate of the University of Maryland.
Mroz also spoke about why community matters.
“The biggest threat facing young people in the Church right now is loneliness,” she said. “Just knowing we’re not alone, that we have other people who want to run to heaven with us, makes all the difference.”
“You can create programs anywhere,” Father Schmidt said. “What keeps people coming back is knowing they belong.”
Former counselors now teach at St. John’s School. Families who first came for camp have enrolled their children at the school and stayed in the parish. Couples who met on staff have married. Young men who grew up around St. John’s have entered seminary.
Olon described the program as a tiered mentorship: younger campers look to teen volunteers, who look to older counselors, who look to college students.
Summer Phan never attended as a camper. She entered the Leader in Training program at 14 and kept coming back.
“I just fell in love with the place,” she said. “I gravitate toward it.”
At 16, she occupies the middle of that chain: old enough to be watched by younger children, still watching the people ahead of her.
“The staff are older than me and more experienced,” she said. “It’s inspiring to see how they’ve grown in their faith and kept it through college. I aspire to do the same.”
In before- and aftercare, children can spend much of the day with the same counselors. Some remember Phan from earlier summers and gravitate back to her.
“It’s the little things they remember,” Phan said. “It’s nice to be someone they can look up to, almost like an older sister.”
Hannah Lawrence first arrived as a high school counselor in 2014, drawn largely by the friendships. She has returned every summer since. She attended Mass. She spent hours in Eucharistic Adoration. She knew the catechism. She knew the prayers. Her faith was familiar, even fluent.
What she did not yet have, she said, was a personal relationship with Christ.
“I had one foot in the Church and one foot outside it,” she said.
Then another counselor asked her a question.
“Do you actually know Him?”
“That invitation changed my life,” Lawrence said.
She is 29 now. She teaches second grade at St. John’s School and still gives her summers to the program.
“At the heart of the program is a love for the Eucharist,” she said.
More than a decade later, she may be the one to recognize when someone younger is ready for the same invitation.
“Eventually, some campers begin following their counselors to Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. Not because they understand what’s happening,” Olon said, “but they want what they have.”
Olon recalled seeing a staff member walk into Eucharistic Adoration with five little girls following behind her, books in hand.
“They want to go because she’s there,” Olon said. “They want to see, ‘Why is this so important to her?’”
Addie Lyons, 19, an exercise physiology student at Ave Maria University, has moved through nearly every stage of the program, from camper to volunteer to instructor. Now helping lead aftercare, she sees younger children beginning to follow the same path.
“The biggest thing is just having fun with them,” Lyons said. “When you build those friendships, kids naturally start asking questions. They’ll ask if they can go to Adoration with you because they want to do what you’re doing.”
Later that afternoon, after Adoration, the counselors the campers had spent the day watching gathered in a classroom of their own.
They settled into folding chairs, still wearing their staff polos and lanyards. Backpacks slumped against chair legs. Water bottles sat across the tables. Behind Olon, hundreds of tiny crosses covered a poster headed, in large Gothic letters, TO SAVE 1,000 SOULS. The crosses tracked indulgences the young people were seeking to gain and apply to souls in purgatory.
Olon looked around the room.
“We need someone for the puppy shift tonight,” he said.
The rescue puppies would be leaving soon, with a new group arriving Friday. Until then, somebody still had to take the evening shift.
A hand went up.
Friday was also the final day of the Mary’s Meals “Eyebrows/Hair for Food Challenge,” which put staff members’ hair and eyebrows at the mercy of donors. Friends and family joined in from home, Olon said, sometimes adding money to “Save” a counselor from the clippers. Other donations went to “Shave.”
The room broke into laughter as counselors calculated who was in danger.
“Go ahead,” Olon said. “Challenge each other. Raise lots of money.”
Ultimately, the contest raised $25,635.55 for Mary’s Meals and its school feeding program at Chaone Primary School in Malawi. Over eight years, the St. John’s Summer Program has raised nearly $250,000 for the program.
Olon praised camps that had gone well and listed the week ahead: guys’ night, girls’ night, a pool party. Several counselors were leaving at week’s end, and he named them one by one so there would still be time to say goodbye.
Then came the lock-in.
Olon needed volunteers.
“This is your lock-in, run by you, for you,” he said.
There were leaders to choose and a setup crew to assemble. If everything else fell apart, he told them, they would probably have fun anyway.
Then there was cleanup: the job that began after the lock-in was over, when everyone else was ready to go home and the space still had to be put back together for the morning.
“The cleanup crew is more important than anything else,” Olon told them. “It’s a way to serve each other.”
Around the room, hands went up.
