In the heart of Texas, less than an hour away from Waco, lies Rosebud. This tiny town, holding just about 1,000 people, may seem small and unassuming to some. However, among the hills and fields lies a not-so-insignificant camp. 
In the heat of summer, the morning sun begins to rise over the rolling hills as a LeTourneau nursing student carefully checks medication labels against her chart, preparing to administer morning doses to campers at Camp Beloved and Beyond.
With gentle precision, she measures out pills and liquid medications, her clinical training merging seamlessly with the camp's mission of radical love. What makes this scene remarkable isn't just the professional competence she displays—it's that she's discovering how her future career can be a ministry of compassion, learning to see each camper not as a patient, but as a beloved child of God deserving of her very best care.
This nursing student's experience represents exactly what Glen and Laura Elder envisioned when they founded Beloved and Beyond. After nineteen years of running camps for children with special needs, they launched Beloved and Beyond in 2020 with a revolutionary vision: a place where children and young adults with disabilities aren't just served, but where they eventually become servants themselves, and where young adults like this nursing student discover that caring for others transforms their own hearts and deepens their calling to serve.
More Than Summer Camp
"A week of camp is so intricate," explains Laura Elder. "It's not just a camp for people with disabilities. We get the privilege of watching nine weeks in a row of six-day mission trips." The training covers communication strategies, abilities awareness, team building, crisis intervention, and child abuse prevention, creating a safe place for campers, where the volunteers receive "as many tools as we can to love well."
The camp's structure creates multiple opportunities for people to serve.
The B-Crew, consisting of 13-15 year-olds, work as waiters and waitresses in the dining hall, clean bathrooms and cabins, and are primed to be future staff members. Those 16 and older serve as one-on-one "buddies.”
This is where many LeTourneau students find their place to serve.
A buddy serves as a best friend and caretaker of each of our campers through the week. They accompany campers through all the fun activities and are there to comfort on hard days. Being a buddy shows young adults what it’s like to serve someone else.
For the Elders, who have two adult children with disabilities themselves, the camp represents something deeper than summer recreation. They view it as ministry to "the biggest unreached people group in the world because the world doesn't think they need to be reached."
"We get to share the gospel with our friends because the Bible's clear," Laura explains. "It says, 'Go preach the gospel to every nation, tribe, tongue,' and we get to do that. And we believe they understand because that's the Holy Spirit's job. We just get to tell them about Jesus and how beloved they are." Volunteers may start the week with the expectation that they are there to make an impact, but really they are the ones that leave changed.
The LeTourneau Connection
The partnership between Camp Beloved andBeyond and LeTourneau University began organically about a decade ago when Glen and Laura's nephew and niece were students at LeTourneau. Having grown up as missionary kids in Central Asia, they recognized an opportunity for service and approached the camp directors about organizing spring break missions.
"It started really small," Laura recalls, "and now every summer, every spring break, it's blossomed. And LeTourneau is so supportive to encourage people to come and serve alongside us."
The partnership has created year-round mission opportunities for students at LeTourneau to serve in a variety of capacities, from nursing students receiving clinical hours to special education majors receiving hands-on experience far greater than a classroom, and any other student who has a desire to preach the gospel to the world, there are opportunities serve.
Beyond spring break missions, the camp offers family camp in October, winter respite in December, and various weekend service opportunities. This flexibility allows not only for students to participate even when summer internships might conflict with traditional camp schedules, but allows parents a chance to find respite any time of year.
For LeTourneau students and other young volunteers, the camp experience proves life-changing in unexpected ways. 
Laura Elder describes watching sixteen-year-old boys and girls come to camp believing it will be like any other camp, and they leave having taken care of someone for the first time in their life. "Maybe [our volunteers] tenderly have to wipe food off [a camper’s] face or take care of some intimate things to make sure they have a great week," she explains. "By the end of the week, they're changed and mom and dad call and go, 'What did y'all do with my son? He went to camp a boy, came home a man.'” Glen Elder says, “It's transforming their lives by learning to serve, putting the needs of others first. Things that I didn't learn when I was 16."
Everyone who steps foot at Beloved and Beyond is given the opportunity to be transformed.
"We have over 100 college kids we hire to be on summer staff," Glen Elder explains. "Most of them stay either half a summer or a full summer, and we just get to pour into them every week with Bible studies, worship time, prayer time. They just grow so much in their ability as leaders and in their own walk with the Lord."
These Bible studies, prayer moments that take place after each night of camp give our leaders a chance to seek the Lord for strength and guidance to love well.
Beloved and Beyond serves as a training ground for future ministry leaders. Many former volunteers and staff go on to careers in special education, nursing, ministry, and therapy, carrying the camp's philosophy of radical inclusion into their professional lives.
When "Impossible" Becomes Possible
Each day our campers get to experience horseback riding, fishing, canoeing, arts and crafts, archery, zip-lining, finishing off the night with themed parties—carnivals with games and inflatables, dance parties, pool parties, and a final cross-carry ceremony where each cabin prays around a cross before passing it to the next group.
The week culminates in a talent show where every camper is celebrated enthusiastically, regardless of their ability.
However, going off to camp isn’t always easy, especially for our parents. It takes true, deep trust in our leaders and volunteers. 
But the Lord has been faithful to the leaders at Beloved and Beyond. His transformative power becomes most evident in stories like that of a young girl with cerebral palsy whose parents initially doubted she could participate. Unable to walk, talk, or eat independently, she seemed unlikely to enjoy traditional camp activities. Her parents looked at the water slide, horses, zip line, and dance activities with skepticism.
"They said, 'I think we're just going to go. I don't think this is going to work,'" Laura remembers.
But Laura and the summer staff, who had prepped for this week and prayed specifically for each camper, convinced them to stay, and when the parents returned, they discovered something extraordinary in their daughter's photo book.
The photos showed their daughter experiencing the zip line through a special apparatus, riding a horse for the first time with support, and being dressed like a princess for the dance where buddies lifted and spun her around.
"Mom and Dad get back and they open up this photo book and go, 'Wait, y'all carried her up that water slide so she could splash down and laugh just like everybody else?' And I was like, 'Yes, yes, ma'am. That's what we do at camp.'"
The parents' response was profound: "I am so thankful because we had given up that my daughter was never going to be able to do anything the rest of her life. So thank you for giving us hope."
This story illustrates the camp's fundamental philosophy: radical inclusion through creative adaptation. The facility in Rosebud, Texas, which was once inaccessible, now features accessible bathrooms, roads, ramps, and a swimming pool with zero entry so wheelchairs can roll directly in. Every activity is modified to ensure every camper can participate fully.
Each year the camp is given a theme, decided after months of prayer, and this year’s theme verse, Ephesians 3:20-21, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we all ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be the glory."
This verse perfectly encapsulates their experience of God doing the impossible in the lives of the Elders, the volunteers, the parents, and campers–just like this one.
The Ripple Effect
The impact of Camp Beloved and Beyond extends far beyond the immediate camp experience. For families of children with disabilities, the camp provides crucial respite care. Laura notes that many families "don't get breaks," and some have told them that dropping their children at camp allowed them their first date in ten years.
"It’s kind of part of restoring marriages," she explains. "We get to remind them they are beloved by God. It's a pretty magical place."
For LeTourneau students, the experience often proves so transformative that they return year after year, even after graduation.
"All our past staff that…can't come serve for a summer, always come back, either serve for a week or serve for a weekend," Laura notes. "Because this is kind of a slice of heaven, you just walk in and you don't worry about what other people think. And it's so refreshing. It's kind of how Jesus would look at us and respond."
Perhaps most remarkably, longtime campers themselves join the Beyond Team, serving two-week work crews and fulfilling their own dreams of giving back. "For many years our campers go, 'When is it going to be my turn to volunteer?'" Laura shares. "And they get to serve the place they've been served."
Living the Mission
For LeTourneau students seeking meaningful service opportunities, Camp Beloved and Beyond offers more than volunteer hours or resume builders.
It provides a chance to discover, as Laura puts it, "the privilege of watching 
people be the hands and feet of Jesus at a place where the world says they can't be reached." In a world that often overlooks or undervalues people with disabilities, the camp creates space for radical love, unexpected joy, and mutual transformation.
Students arrive thinking they're going to change lives, but inevitably discover that the campers change them instead.
Glen and Laura Elder emphasize that their work flows from personal experience.
Raising five children, including two with disabilities, while simultaneously serving hundreds of campers and volunteers, has taught them that "good and hard can coexist, and the Lord has been so good.”
"We're not promised tomorrow," Laura acknowledges. "So we're praying that we can do today well and love intimately and fiercely and advocate for all our people, especially our campers that often don't get advocated for. But we feel honored and blessed that God chose us to do good and hard."
As the sun sets over another day at Camp Beloved and Beyond, the sound of laughter echoes across the accessible grounds.
Somewhere, a buddy is tying shoes, not his own, but those of a friend who has taught him what it means to love without condition. Somewhere else, a former camper is proudly serving lemonade, having graduated from receiver to giver.
And somewhere, a LeTourneau student is discovering that in the economy of God's kingdom, the ones who appear to need the most help are often the ones with the most to give.
This is the magic of Camp Beloved and Beyond: a place where service transforms the servant, where limitations become opportunities, and where every person—regardless of ability—is celebrated as fearfully and wonderfully made.
