What it’s Like to be a Spy at PHC

This summer at Patrick Henry College, I attended an enthralling Strategic Intelligence Camp. Assuming a new identity, I lived my week as Maxwell Dylan Owens. I was an aerospace engineer who worked for Boeing and lived in Cocoa Beach, FL. The scenario for the camp was in a fake sub-Saharan African country called Mankobo. The situation was grim: Radical Islamic Akbar terrorist and their leader Malik were trying to overthrow the government of Mankobo to rule it themselves. Divided into six different U.S. agencies, our leaders sent us (the campers) to complete a series of missions and eventually capture Malik and turn him over to the Monkobian government.

The missions were conducted at night along with chapel and other recreation activities while during the day we agents were trained through lectures and presentations about the intelligence community and its true functionality. The truth of the matter is that intelligence agents don’t drive cool cars with special gadgets and walk around in tuxedos with guns in their suits like James Bond. Intelligence agents range in many ways from those to act like normal citizens, trying to gather information about a certain country or group, to those who tap into foreign phone conversations or look at images to learn about future plans. In the lectures, we learned about the history of intelligence. From Joshua and Caleb and Rehab in the Old Testament to post 9-11 intelligence services. We also discussed the different agencies in the U.S. and the different types of intelligence they each conduct. For example, the CIA and NSA concentrate on foreign intelligence by gathering information from humans and technology. The FBI on the other hand concentrates on domestic intelligence and protecting our country from our own civilians.

I greatly enjoyed the chapel nights at camp. Camp chapel was on Monday and Wednesday nights. This chapel was great because of the congregational singing. The worship through singing was probably the best part. On the nights we didn't have camp chapel we had wing chapel. This was like a devotional time with our team's counselor. We also had breakfast devotions which set our eyes on Christ for the day. These chapel times helped us keep our focus the Lord amidst all the fun and distractions of camp.

Thursday we took a special trip to the spy museum in Washington, DC and saw all of the interesting intricate artifacts that spies have used trough out our history. After the tour through the museum we were able to go sight seeing in DC with our agencies. My agency, SOCOM, toured the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. During the week, the agencies were summing up points for passing room inspections, arriving to breakfast in time, and successfully completing the missions.

Friday night we culminated the point scoring with a skit. The skit was worth so many points that it could completely rearrange the agencies rankings. The tension could have been cut by a knife as the head counselor stood up to give the final scores after the skits. As our agency’s name was not called for the four last for places, it came down to who was in second place. As the counselor dragged out the agency in second place, our team roared with cheer as we didn’t hear our agency called. This only meant that our agency had won first place! We had worked well together to be at breakfast in time, work with each other to clean our rooms, and use our brains together to successfully complete the missions. Our team successfully soared above the rest and showed our flying colors with successfully avoiding the terrorist and seldom breaking cover during interrogations. This camp was one of the best I’ve ever attended and I am looking forward to attending other PHC teen leadership camps in the future.

If any of you are interesting in attending SI camp or other great leadership camps at PHC, visit http://www.phc.edu/teencamps/.

God bless,
David