Darin Edmonds expresses his gratitude for the Pathfinders’ willingness to participate in the cleanup effort at Mount Pisgah Cemetery in Gillette, Wyoming.
The 2024 International Pathfinder Camporee kicked off in earnest on August 6. For the first time in its history, it will be held in Gillette, Wyoming’s third-largest city (population approximately 33,500). While many great memories have been made from the decades-long event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a new location offers new potential.
One of the cornerstones of the five-yearly camporee is community service. Thousands of Pathfinder youth, club leaders and other participants take the opportunity to show the love and compassion of Jesus Christ in a tangible way to the host city and its residents. Over the course of the week, nearly four dozen projects take place, covering service categories such as distributing food and other needed items, mentoring seniors and veterans and beautifying the city.
Cemetery beautification
One of the beautification projects is taking place at Mount Pisgah Cemetery. Monuments, headstones and crosses commemorating war veterans become marred over time by hard water and mineral deposits. Camporee volunteers participating in this particular project receive a brief orientation on how to remove these deposits and then can begin the work.
Darin Edmonds, director of the Campbell County Cemetery District and overseer of this project, expressed his gratitude for the partnership between Pathfinders and Gillette.
“This community’s relationship with this cemetery is very special,” Edmonds said. “When you look at the final resting place of these loved ones, you can feel how proud the community is of what we do here. … now they can come and say, ‘Wow! It looks really beautiful; everything looks brand new.’ And so we have the opportunity to do that with the help of the Pathfinders, and I’m extremely grateful for that opportunity.”
Some of the participants also shared their views. A notable example comes from Oscar, a Master Guide of the Lions Pathfinder Club in Wingate, North Carolina: “The speech that (Edmonds) gave was really touching. You could really feel the emotion… as he told us how important this place is and how we take for granted the people who have passed away… that we came here to do this has a huge impact on (the community).”
Some of the Pathfinders take a short, well-deserved break from their hard work beautifying the landscape of Gillette, Wyoming.
Cemeteries are often neglected, but they often contain the remains of lives well lived. This cleanup was aptly described as “a worthwhile effort to restore the human dignity that God has given to each and every person who has ever lived on this sin-marred but beautiful planet.”
Debris collection
Another beautification project covers a much larger area. Dozens of Pathfinders are teaming up with the Campbell County Landfill to collect all kinds of trash from roadsides and other lands throughout Gillette. Pervasive trash is a harsh reality for a city that recently experienced a population surge due to an industrial boom.
“This is just a good community service project. The community sees it, things are cleaned up, it’s just helpful for everybody,” said Joey Schipman, who works in the landfill’s weigh house. “This is not something people like to do… it’s a never-ending problem… just coming out here and picking up the waste and leaving the community cleaner than it was when (the Pathfinders) started is great. I hope people see it because it’s really a good thing they’re doing,” she added.
Checkout www.nadadventist.org Check back this week for more news on how Pathfinders are serving as beacons in northeast Wyoming.
