What do you get when you put nearly two hundred excited and rambunctious kids into a room? A whole lot of noise!
If you’ve ever been at camp while summer camps are in full swing, you’ve no doubt experienced the wall of noise that greets you the moment you enter the dining hall during mealtime. It can be a challenge just to hear yourself think! But what can be done about such inevitable pandemonium? Well, this month Tim Dehnart and Chris Sutton worked on a project to lessen the amount of noise that echoes off the walls and ceiling of our dining hall in the Lodge.
Last year, some cloth curtains were hung from the ceiling, in hopes that it would dampen the echoes, but it didn’t seem to work very well, or make much of a difference. So we decided to try a new approach. Using the resources available, Tim D. worked alongside a couple of volunteers to build sound-dampening panels that Chris Sutton designed. They constructed wooden frames and placed foam inside of them and secured a board on one side. Next, they stapled muslin cloth around the panels. By the time all three dozen were finished, you could hardly tell they were homemade; they look pretty spiffy!
After mounting and hanging all the panels in the lodge we can already tell that the echo in the room is reduced, although the real test will come next summer, when we fill the dining hall to the brim with energetic campers and dorm leaders.
It may seem like noise is a bad thing, but here it’s a sign of a healthy camp! All the excited voices of children who are having fun learning about God, His creation, and making new friends, is an indicator that we’re attaining our mission to reach, train and equip people for Christ. We are thankful to God that we in America are free to facilitate camps every summer so that all these kids can learn how to know God personally, and how to grow and mature in Him daily.