Advanced Camping

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Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest is set for one flaw. Introducing first, from Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos, The Russian Nightmare, Nikita Kolod. Now, The Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up.

Welcome back to another episode of The Man Up Show with yours truly, Nikita Kolod. And, you know, when it comes to building young men, what's your vision for building a foundation for young men? What's your vision? Do you have a vision?

I hope you have a vision. Today with me, I've got Chad Whalen at Vance Camp, and we're going to talk about what it looks like to build young men, fatherless young men more specifically. Chad, welcome to The Man Up Show. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the invite. My privilege to be on here. Well, great to have you here. And of course, we met just a while back in the NRB in Nashville, Tennessee, right?

That's where we connected. And I was very interested, of course, you know, this is The Man Up Show. I have one of my wrestling buddies and I do a camp of our own called Man Camp. But when we were talking, I was very intrigued because, you know, and I have people from time to time, Chad, go, you ever thought about, you know, doing your camps for younger men? Because we, you know, we do 18 and older, right?

But I was happy to hear that there is a camp out there for younger men and more specifically for fatherless young men. But let's talk about that. Let's dive into that. You're the founder and director of Advanced Camp. What gave you the vision for Advanced Camp? That's a loaded question. How much time we got? 27 minutes. Perfect.

I'll condense it down. So the vision, the mission all came from a couple different places. One is growing up. My dad was he just wasn't around all the time during the week. So my parents were still married, but my dad was part of that generation that worked their tails off to provide for their family. And that was what they deemed as their most valuable asset. It wasn't spending time with the kids.

It wasn't being emotionally available to them. It was go work, go provide. And that was the importance. And so growing up, my dad worked in a lumber mill. And he was typically gone by time I got home from the bus about three, three, 15. And then he'd work until one to three o'clock in the morning and then would be sleeping when we got to get ready for school. So my only parental figure was my mom throughout the week.

He was around as long as it wasn't hunting or fishing season on the weekends. So as you can imagine, like all the sports I played, my mom was on the sideline. Any if I ever got in trouble, my mom was the one who reprimanded me. So that was my parental figure throughout the week. And then my dad never went to church with us. So my mom was also, you know, in a sense, the spiritual leader of our home as well.

And so that just made a permanent and still actually makes a permanent impact on some of my day to day decisions. And then my dad actually left that job. The lumber mill closed down. Left that job and went into the corrections industry and became a corrections officer to state penitentiary in Oregon. And he had told he told me one day that at his prison specifically, it was 95 percent of men incarcerated at his prison were from fatherless or father disengaged homes.

No positive male role models in their home. Wow. And that hit me pretty hard.

You know, that's not a national number, but that was their prison in Oregon. And so that's that started brewing in me. And then my wife and I actually met. She's from Beaverton, Oregon.

I'm from Dallas, Oregon, just outside of Salem, the state capital. But we met on a missions trip to Thailand. And this is to rescue children that were at risk of being sold into the sex trade. And so her and I both have had a heart for the younger crowd. The the honestly, the orphan and the widow James 127 is our statement is our verse is our statement of faith here with advanced camp.

And and so I started putting some pieces together to realize that really my calling was to speak into fatherless. As a preventative to end up incarcerated. And working with those that didn't have any positive male role model.

So if they had a father figure in there, technically, they still had a father figure in their life that wasn't a role model to them anymore. And so that's that's kind of the basis of what we do. But advanced camp or I guess not what we do, but where it came from. Advanced camp at the heart of it is a preventative ministry to keep these guys from going down the path that the fatherless are statistically aligned for. Well, you bring up some interesting really statistics when you mentioned that. And I've heard that about prisons before. And I've spoken in a handful of prisons. It's not been the main calling all my life to speak in prisons, but in speaking in prisons and having conversations with them and and even through our own camps, you know, with gosh, I would say, Chad, I would say probably 90 percent of the guys ultimately over the course of five days at our camp, the father son relationship comes up in conversation. And in that percentage, 90 percent of them do not look at their relationship with the with their earthly dad in a favorable light. It's just the reality.

And even your own story, I'm listening to your story. So in a sense, so you had a dad at home, but I kind of call it an absentee father. Right. He's there.

But he's but he's still absent. Right. And I was wondering about the connection to Oregon as well, because I actually my my my oldest daughter is married to my son in law. Chad is from Bend, Oregon.

I don't know. Are you familiar with Bend? Oh, yeah.

I lived there for about three, three and a half years, actually, from 19 to 22. Oh, my gosh. That's a small world. So, yeah, he's originally from from from Bend. He's in the music industry. He's been in it for many, many, many years.

And but they live in Nashville, Tennessee, because of that. But so so you so you're and it's incredible to take him in and tell us about you. You mentioned your wife and having a heart for just young young people and even trying to rescue some out of that, you know, sex slavery, sex industry.

So how long you guys been married and you got children of your own then? And tell us about taking. Yeah, so that's a fun question.

I like to throw a math problem at people and see if they can figure it out. So I let people scratch their head. My wife and I actually met on this mission trip. We had a heart for these kids that were, quote, at risk of being sold in sex trade.

They never like pulled any out of the trade, but they looked statistically of who is the most likely to end up. And that's who they served in a house, a home environment is a really cool system that they made. So we met there. We got married actually pretty quick. I would say we started dating and married within about seven months. We had our daughter seven days after our one year anniversary. But building up to that, we we've just always had this heart for the fatherless about 10 months before my daughter was born.

We had visited our actually VHS in Oregon visited our church and it was called Father to the Fatherless. And it was about mentoring, fostering and adopting. And that's where he actually started on the adoption path or sorry, fostering path.

And what had actually happened was we went to this on a Saturday. That next Friday, we find out we're pregnant, kind of sets it off for about 10, 11 months. And we decided to start going on this journey after our daughter was born. We actually brought our first foster kids and our daughter was 11 months old. The math problem is I'm a dad of 18 kids. My wife has given birth to five. I only have three biological, but I have five children in the home and my wife's due with another that's not mine.

And so people, when I tell them that their head starts like spinning. Our heart has been so much for the fatherless that we have brought in 15. We argue 15 or 16 foster kids.

We've done respite. So sometimes we count that sometimes we don't 15, 16 foster kids over 10 years. Our son, we've only had daughters. And so our son is adopted. We just adopted him about three, four months ago. We have another foster son right now that's eight months old. But my wife has been a surrogate for families that are not capable of having children.

And so she is actually 20, sorry, 36 weeks pregnant right now with her third surrogacy, final surrogacy for a family in Australia. That unfortunately, the wife was born without a uterus. And we just we felt God was actually leading us to carry this child for them so that they could complete their family. So it's always kind of funny. I throw these numbers of people and not speak in churches and they're like, wait a second.

Those numbers don't make sense. That's kind of a fun little fact about me and my wife is how deep we go into serving the fatherless. It's pretty amazing. And of course, I would have potentially been a candidate of yours back in my youth as my dad left when I was around three and really didn't come back into my life till my college days, college football days. And then it wasn't until into my 40s, mid 40s that we really find he was in his mid 80s that we finally really connected in the last nine or 10 years of his life.

We ended up having a father son relationship that, you know, that that those who are fatherless would would long for. Right. And so it was very, very fortunate, very blessed that way. And so so Oregon, I know you're Oregon and South Florida and Texas and Tennessee is currently where you do these advanced camps, right? Correct. Yep.

Yeah. And you're based out of where, though? So where where do you call home, Chad? Texas. So I'm my wife and I and our kids live just southwest of Fort Worth.

So that's what I call our national headquarters. We do once a month day camp here in Texas. I actually fly out and I run twenty three of our twenty seven day camps that we run per year. So I run six down in South Florida. I run the four up in Tennessee, one in Georgia every year, 12 in Texas. And then I have a guy that's our state director that runs four over in Oregon.

So it just kind of depends on their scenarios of how many they run per year. But yeah, that's that's how we're spread out right now. So you are you are covering some covered some territory, covered some ground. And so give our listeners an idea. You know, you said day camp. So so what and I know from your website, it says sixth to 12th grade. That's kind of the focus and the target. Right. Sixth to 12th graders. Yes, correct.

And so I want you to take take a few minutes and talk to you. I know they can come in and learn practical skills and but give some examples to to the to the single moms out there. Like if I send my son to advance camp, what can I anticipate they might experience or what might happen there?

For sure. So what our day camp looks like is we we find a church typically at each of these states that says, hey, we will be your home base. So like South Florida, there's a church in Cooper City. We all meet at that church in their parking lot. They let me park our vehicles there.

The moms come and drop off their sons, you know, between eight, eight, 30 in the morning. We get in a vehicle, then we travel whoever you teach the trades. So a great example is we did automotive down in an auto shop down in Hollywood, Florida. And so we came down, met at the church, got in the van, drove down to the automotive shop. We taught vehicle inspection.

So it's a 74 point inspection. And we taught brakes, tire repair, changing a tire, how to change an auto vehicle, how to change belts on a vehicle. We do lunch between about 1130 and 1230, where we teach, quote, a nugget out of scripture. So it's something to do with the Bible that ties into whatever activity we're doing. We get creative on automotive. People like automotive didn't exist back in Jesus' time. So how do you teach scripture that ties with automotive? And we do. So we tie that in during lunch break.

After lunch, we go back to whatever we're teaching, kind of tie up whatever the topic is, get back in our vehicles about three thirty four o'clock, drive back to the church, and then mom would pick their sons back up from that church location. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Nikita Kolof here and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement?

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Well, I have news for you. Now you can get the whole story on my audio book, Nikita, A Tale of the Ring of Redemption, narrated in my own voice, gaining all perspective and insight into my whole life, including my redemption. If you would like to support Kolof for Christ Ministries for a gift of twenty five dollars, Nikita will send you his two CDs, Adoration and Declaration for a gift of fifty dollars. Nikita will include his book, Wrestling with Success. And for a gift of one hundred dollars or more, Nikita will include a signed copy of his newly updated life story, A Tale of the Ring of Redemption. Go to www.kolof.net and donate today. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. One of the really cool things about Advanced Camp and we're actually in the midst of a fundraising campaign right now.

All of our campers come to camp for free. Wow. The one thing that was really heavy burden to me was I didn't want a single mom to not allow her son to come because of a financial burden. I didn't need that to be the wall for them to say, sorry, my son can't be there.

He can't have a positive role model because I can't. I money in my time is spread so thin that I don't want that. You know, I don't I can't send my son because of that. And so I never want to hear that from a mom. We are funded to the point where they don't pay for anything. So that's one thing that if there's a mom listening and don't let the financial burden be a burden. Well, I do have them put some skin in the game, but they don't pay for anything. Right.

Which is which is important. And I can relate to that as well. Same thing with our man camps is I tell guys I told guys this past week in the church I was at. They're like, hey, I'd like to come to that camp and, you know, finances is an issue. And I'm like, OK, well, you know, we have scholarships available. But, you know, we do we do want you to have some skin of the game. You know, you got to show that you're serious about wanting to come or wanting to participate or being a part of it.

And I know from your Web site, too, you know, you mentioned just one right with the car, the car experience. But they can go to previous camps and just see a whole selection of skills that young men have learned at advanced camp. Give some quickly give some other examples of of other trades or other things that that they might experience.

Yeah, absolutely. So my what I pitched to moms is we teach anything and everything we feel like a dad should come beside these men, young men and teach them. So we do everything from blacksmithing, welding, fabrication, general contracting, plumbing, electrical, lawn care, small repair, guitar repair and customization, 3D printing, RC cars, fishing. We do duck hunting once a year in Texas. We just did the SWAT team, fire department and the court system here in Texas.

And we're doing that in Florida in two months. We do grilling, barbecuing and smoking, which y'all if y'all are from Texas, anybody listening from Texas, they know there's a difference. There is some of the best brisket I've ever had has been in Texas, Chad. So there you go. So that's that's smoking and the barbecuing, grilling is totally different thing.

If you say you're going to grill out, don't expect a brisket, expect, you know, chicken or burgers or hot dogs. Right. Right. Right. Throw that out there. Yeah. So we do a ton of topics.

We we really throw a big, big net. And the reason we do that is I tell the young men when they when I do my intake call with them is best case scenario. You walk away with a career path.

You experience something in advance camp. You say that's what I want to do for a living. Come on.

That's what that's that's my heartbeat. Worst case scenario, they walk away with a new hobby or another. Just one thing to do that they can do this, you know, side hustle or they can just do the past time so that they're not spending time doing other things, you know, getting themselves into scrolling on their phones, for example. I just throw that out there. But yeah. Yeah. So so how do you chat? How do you how do you choose a particular, you know, trade like is on demand or just kind of you just kind of say, OK, we're going to do we're going to do mechanics and then put that word out there. And then all these kids come to learn about car mechanics and that sort of thing.

Yeah. So how our system works is once the camper signs up as a camper, their mom goes on a text message group. And so they'll know about a month ahead of time what topic we're teaching that next month. Our topics have come from a bunch of different places, some stuff that I my dad taught me that I am grateful for. He did teach me hunting and fishing and a little bit of building. But then there's other things like welding and blacksmithing and leather work that I wanted my dad to teach me.

He never did. RC cars, 3D printing, the stuff I wanted to learn as a kid. And I said, OK, if I wanted to learn that so bad, I know these young men want to learn it, too. So I've actually written twenty six curriculum so far. Actually, I'm writing two more right now. So that if we're going to multiply in another state, you know, it's turnkey ask.

Right. And so I kind of go back to my topics and say, what's good topics for the winter? What's good topics for the summer?

And we shift them around like that. As you know, here in Texas, we can get really hot in the summer. Florida gets really hot in the summer. So we pick indoor activities on the summer months.

Texas. Actually, there's about three months in Texas that gets cold enough that we don't like to be outside for those months. So we do inside ones on those months.

So it just kind of depends. We love to fish in May here in Texas. So we align Texas may fishing November is the duck season. So we align it for the duck season to go duck hunting. So that's how we kind of pick them is off of that.

But I have twenty six to pick from. So most of curriculum is written. Most of our resources are aligned. Sometimes let's say we do one in Oregon and I want to do duck hunting and I don't have a duck hunting guide.

I know the Cabela's in 12 in Oregon. I can contact them and say, hey, do you guys know any guide? Hey, do you know a person that could help us out in this place? And then we bring in guys that are believers that do these topics that can come out and teach the young men these life skills. So that's the thing. So they're not only going to get taught life skills, but they're going to hear the gospel. They're going to they're going to experience. So that from in some of these guys that that lead these camps for you, I'm guess could become a short term, long term mentor.

How's that work? Yeah. So the guys teaching the camps, those guys can become a short term or long term job or career because they're the ones teaching like the guy in automotive.

So we did automotive in Hollywood. I'll go back to that just because it's a simple one to go back to the owner of that shop actually saw something in one of our campers and pulled him aside and said, hey, man, you'd love to do this, don't you? He goes, yeah, I sure do. And you I can tell you have some skill towards it. He goes, yeah, I feel like I do.

He goes, when you turn 16, you come see me. You have a job. And that's, that's like, that's a big, that's a big piece of it, right. But those are what we call our product knowledge experts. And then we have guys who are our mentors, and then we have guys are what we call our advocates. And so the mentors are committed to us for a year, depending on the state, it could be six camps, it could be four camps in Texas, it's a year, a year is 12 camps. And so they commit to us for a year to be at 75 to 80% of the camps, because they got to create a relationship with these young men. And then those guys create a long term mentorship with these campers.

That's really what the goal is, is that these guys will create a long term relationship with them, create the ability to speak into their lives, opens up doors, opens up conversations, starts changing lives. And to date, you would say an approximate number of young men's lives that, I'll phrase it this way, pick this up off your website, approximately how many young men's lives have been changed, approximately how many single mothers have been served, would you say at this point, roughly? I believe our number is, I say plus, because it's 113 campers have come through advanced camp at one of the states. With that number in mind, keep in mind that we actually encourage these guys to show up for every camp, every month that we do it, from the point they start until they graduate high school.

Some of these guys have been coming with us for three years, so they are a place that are for three years, but they're one of the 113. And then I think it's about 95 plus moms, because some of them we have sets of brothers that come to camp. So definitely more campers than moms we've impacted. But the neatest thing is we typically partner with single mom ministries, because single mom ministries serve the mom who trickles down to serving the son. We serve the son who trickles up to serving the mom. And so we do definitely serve the moms, although we are not a single mom ministry, but we indirectly serve the moms through the teaching of the sons.

That's incredible. advancedcampusa.com is the website where people can find out more information. Single moms can find out more information.

advancedcampusa.com. And a couple things as we kind of begin to wrap up here, Chad, that really kind of hit home and I think is amazing is one, the cost, you're going to make it available to any single mom out there and because you don't want money to be a reason why they can't, why their son can't attend from anywhere from the sixth grade to the 12th grade. And then the fact that it can either, as you said, either become a hobby or perhaps a future career and walking through one of these camp experiences can lead to a future job, you said as well, right? Absolutely.

Pretty amazing. Well, in our last couple minutes here, whether it's a single mom or maybe there's a young man out there listening to the Man Up show, you know, we get a whole variety of people all over the, really all over the world that listen to the show. What are some parting thoughts that you want to leave, you know, maybe encouragement, inspiration with? One thing I'll say, because I've actually had this battle a couple of times with some campers recently. Some of the young men that we work with feel, hey, I'm okay, I'll figure it out on my own. Hey, it's okay, I'm 16, I've already figured out life. I don't need to try something new. One thing I tell my girls, my kids, and then also my campers is I tell them, hey, you may lose out on finding one of your favorite things to do or to eat if you don't try something new. You know, kids look at a food and they're like, oh, I don't want to try that, it looks gross.

I'm like, that could literally be your favorite food and you don't know because you haven't tried it. So my encouragement to people listening is, man, go try something new. You don't know when you're going to find your next favorite activity or your next favorite food or your next favorite scripture verse that's out there that you just haven't reached out to yet. But man, the other thing is don't give up. You know, there's points growing up with my dad not being around. For one, I am still intentionally trying to build a relationship with my father that's a good communicating relationship. But for two, I'm always trying to grow myself to become a better person, a better leader, a better dad, a better mentor. So don't ever give up.

It's so worth it in the end. That's powerful. Advanced Camp, a day camp held for fatherless young men, 6th to 12th grade.

And currently Oregon, South Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, I want you to go to advancedcampusa.com. And I like, I want to make sure and reemphasize this too. In addition to building a strong foundation through these practical skills, moms, listen up, single moms, listen up, or maybe you know a single mom who's got a young man between the ages of sixth grade and 12th grade.

In addition, they also, the dedicated mentors, help teach them how to be rooted and established in Christ. That's amazing, Chad. You're doing some great work, my brother. I'm grateful to have you on the show today.

Yeah, what a privilege. Yes, this has been awesome. And so I want all of you, I want all of you, one, just be praying for Chad. Chad, how big a team do you have, roughly? How big a team? We have about 40 mentors across the nation. Okay, so 40 mentors.

And listen, this is a real need. You heard what Chad said about the prison system, but even in addition to that, they don't have to be in prison and fatherless. There's a lot, I grew up fatherless, so I get it. And fortunately I didn't end up in prison.

I certainly could have made some mistakes and landed there, but I didn't. But I want you to be praying for Chad, Chad Whalen and his team, and pray for these camps, advanced camps. And if you know somebody that fits within this category, send them to advancedcampusa.com, and who knows, you may have a role in changing a young man's life for eternity. So Chad, thank you for being on the show today. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

It was quite the privilege. Awesome. And thank you each and every week for tuning in, for dialing in to the Man Up show. God bless you.

Go out and live a God-filled, God-blessed day. If you are enjoying the Man Up show, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Hi, Nikita Koloff.

Be sure to check out the Man Up show, now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to MorningStarTV.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings, or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. Nikita Koloff here.

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