June 20th, 1863 was a special day for many of us, even though we weren?t there to experience it. West Virginia Day is very special to me because of the immense pride I have for my state. One of the greatest prides I feel we all should share as West Virginians for this state is our 4-H program. I recently attended National 4-H Conference in Washington D.C. I met people from forty-nine states and two other countries. Just to let you know, we are so lucky for the 4-H program we have, especially the camping program.

I feel that our program balances the learning and the fun part of 4-H better than any other program in this country. Today at OMC our campers experienced this in full swing with the community service projects we all participated in. The campers learned from the speaker we had today, Mr. Chad Higgins, that there is a difference between community service and service learning. He said that what we were doing today was service learning because we were finding out new ways to possibly conduct community service in our home counties or elsewhere.
After listening to the speaker we moved to our small groups where we discussed what the speaker had to say about what we were preparing to take part in. As we dove into our community service projects we did learn a great deal about the proper way to do things and such, but we also had an enormous amount of fun. We also were discovering that the feeling you get when you give back to a place you care about so much is amazing, especially on this great state?s birthday.

In closing I just want to say that 4-H has changed my life from the moment I stepped into it. This week though, has definitely been one of the most amazing weeks of camp I have ever spent here at Jackson?s Mill, or anywhere else. I know that the reason for that is that we have had to, as a full camp, deal with so many sticky situations. The staff have been praising us all week for the way we have come together to adapt and I will never forget all that I have learned from this 2007 OMC.