Teresa Lee says that when she started going to camp, it helped her reconnect with her faith. “I was out of the church for so long. I came back and got my confirmation. I had no idea what was adoration. It was a great idea that year. I started helping out the following year as a leader.”
Nicholas Lau, who has attended since 2003, says the camp made a big impact on him spending some time in seminary. He entered seminary for the LA Archdiocese in 2010 after speaking with a spiritual director at camp who was a Capuchin priest in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. “It got me really passionate about wanting this camp to be available for future generations. I saw how many lives it has touched that I wanted it for the future. I wanted to share with other people and that’s why I’ve stayed so close to it...There’s just something very special about this camp. We know it touches lives. It touches people’s lives. And for other reasons, it has impacted me because probably without the living camp, I probably wouldn’t have gone to seminary. I went to seminary and studied priesthood for four years and I left. I can pinpoint that to living camp as well.”
Nathan Lau, who has attended since 2003, says his favorite memory was doing Taize prayer for the first time, a night of candle-lit Adoration with contemplative prayer and music.
“From the first time I went to the living camp back in 2003, that was during Taize. I had my encounter with God. It turned my life around. When I first went to living camp, I was pretty much at a low point in my life. I wasn’t feeling well spiritually or mentally. When they were having the Taize prayer, I remembered participating in it. This was my first time going to Taize and being a part of it. We were kneeling in a dark chapel, singing the songs. I knelt before the cross while everyone was singing. In my heart, I unloaded all my stress and thoughts and comforts, all my troubles and problems to God. Why is this happening to me? I tried to go through life without you. Obviously the right way to go to you. I’m sorry for doubting you, can you love me again? It was at that moment where I felt a blanket of warmth and love all over me, wash over me. I was on my knee before the cross. That hit me very hard. God is real, He’s really here. It just turned my life around. I couldn’t deny God’s existence. That was the turning point in my life.”
Albert Lee first learned about CACCLC from his brother, who told him, “So there’s this huge Retreat thing coming up here in NorCal. You should attend and learn things and become a better person from it.”
At first he scoffed at it, but then he looked through the website. “I was confused as I thought that much like unicorns or outfits that don’t make me look fat, Chinese Catholics didn’t exist. After being reminded that the Catholic aspect was the important part of the acronym I registered,” he said.
Now, CACCLC is one of the highlights of his year and he even keeps CACCLC memorabilia on his desk. “I could go into great detail on how much of a life changing experience CACCLC ended up being but I am unfortunately constrained by word count and my life’s responsibilities,” Albert said. “Long story short, it ended up being a turning point in my religious life. Since I graduated high school I had gotten complacent, forgetting what it really meant to be Catholic and just doing things out of routine. But all the things I learned and experienced, most notably doing Eucharistic Adoration for the first time, changed the way I looked at my faith and motivated me to take it more seriously.”
