The crowd roared, staffers threw confetti and glitter, and PASSPORT’s Vice President Colleen Burroughs beamed with excitement as Alfarouk Majid walked across the stage.
Representing the 99,999 campers who had come before him in the 23 years of Passport’s ministry, Alfarouk Majid was awarded PASSPORT’s honorary 100,000th camper. Accepting the ‘PASSPORT Camper For Life’ certificate, the 16-year-old Iraqi-born Majid was excited and bit overwhelmed.
A little over a year before Majid had even heard of PASSPORT, the National office began to anticipate the milestone marking the 100,000th camper in 2015. Although registration made it impossible to pinpoint the exact camper to cross this historic line, the decision was made to celebrate the occasion the last week of the summer at PASSPORTmissions in Danville, Virginia.
“PASSPORTmissions is the classic camp model that we started with in 1993,” said Passport founder and president, David Burroughs. “Combining youth camp with a mission trip was revolutionary two decades ago, and it put us on the map with churches looking for a meaningful summer experience for their youth group. It was the obvious choice for recognizing this milestone. The rest was out of my hands. We literally dropped a pin on a map of the churches coming that week, and it landed in South Carolina.”
After the fated pin dropped, the National office contacted camp director Mary Katherine Johnson and PASSPORTmissions coordinator Dale Tadlock, who approached Jennifer Rygg, First Baptist Pendleton’s youth minister. Upon the announcement of Majid’s name, First Baptist Pendleton’s youth group erupted into cheers.
Passport co-founder and Vice President Colleen Burroughs recalls, “The crowd cheered as we gave this young man free camp for life. It was a lot to take in – balloons, lights, cameras. He was speechless.” Along with his father and brother, Majid came to the United States from Iraq via Syria. The family now runs Something Special Restaurant in Pendleton, S.C., where the youth from First Baptist invited them to camp.