Fr. Jason McClure, chaplain for Gasper River Catholic Youth Camp and Retreat Center, celebrates Mass on June 11, 2025, for Quest 1 Camp (seventh and eighth grade level), as vocations director Fr. Corey Bruns concelebrates. ELIZABETH WONG BARNSTEAD | WKC
‘I can’t wait to come back’
A summer of hope at Gasper River
BY BEN WARRELL, SPECIAL TO THE WESTERN KENTUCKY CATHOLIC
“This was the best summer of my life!”
“Thank you for having this special place for us to come to grow in faith.”
“I’m going to look for hope and do my best to share hope everywhere I go.”
“I’ve never felt closer to God.”
“Spending time with Jesus at adoration was amazing. Going to Mass and receiving Jesus everyday was awesome!”
“I made so many friends and grew so close to God, I didn’t want this week to end.”
“I can’t wait to come back next summer.”
These are just some of the messages we received from campers about their experiences this summer. We are so filled with hope after our 18th summer here at Gasper River Catholic Youth Camp. It was our biggest summer ever with lots of campers on waiting lists to get into several weeks of camp. So many young people had life-changing encounters with Jesus and left here as different people!
Our theme for the summer was Pilgrims of Hope with the focus on “The one who has hope lives differently.” We spoke about what hope is and how to grow hope in our lives. Hope is a special gift from God to help us know Him and love Him better and have our hearts’ greatest desire to be in Heaven with the Lord forever. We grow our hope by being rooted in faith, celebrating the sacraments as often as possible, and developing a strong prayer life.
We also talked about looking for hope in this world. We find what we look for: if we look for bad things, we’ll find bad things, and if we look for holy things, we will find holy things – so we talked about changing our mindsets to look for hope in our world. We also shared about being anchored in hope: that of all the things we experience in life, good or bad, if we are anchored in hope we will always be led back to Christ. On Thursdays we talked about stories of hope and shared stories of the saints’ lives and how hope played such a huge part of their stories. Campers were also challenged to write and share their own stories of hope. Finally, campers were sent forth on Fridays challenged to live differently as Pilgrims of Hope.
One of the problems we are facing as we grow and grow each year is our need for more caring adults to be involved with the ministry here during the summer. Please begin praying about being involved with camp for summer 2026. If you are baptized, you are qualified to help out here! We need your help!
Camp is growing faster than we ever imagined and we need weekly volunteers to help young people come to know Jesus Christ. If you feel called to help out, please contact our office at (270) 781-2466 for more information. Thank you all so much for the prayers and support of the ministry at Gasper River. It is so wonderful to have the support of so many for the amazing things the Holy Spirit is doing here at camp.
Ben Warrell is the director of Gasper River Catholic Youth Camp and Retreat Center. To support Gasper’s efforts, visit https://www.gasperriverretreatcenter.org/support-gasper-river, or mail a donation to Gasper River Catholic Youth Camp & Retreat Ctr., 2695 Jackson Bridge Rd., Bowling Green, KY, 42101. To bring a work team to help with projects, contact Ben Warrell at (270) 781-2466 or email [email protected].
Originally printed in the September 2025 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.
