Today, they’re just kids with potato chips and pudding cups, taking a break from the heat in an air-conditioned lodge at a campground in Stewartsville, Mo.

They don’t look like reflections of a statistic — of the more than 3 million American children each year who are physically attacked, emotionally damaged, sexually molested or severely neglected. They don’t stand out as coming from foster homes or broken families.

Today, they’re just 32 7- through 11-year-olds at summer camp. But they’re also hearing they’re much more than that.

“We want them to know God loves them,” says the Rev. Chase Peeples, pastor of First Christian Church in St. Joseph, “and that they’re valued and loved, no matter what’s happened to them.”

This week marked the 17th year First Christian Church — with donations from numerous other area churches and organizations — held its Royal Family Kids’ Camp, one of more than 100 week-long residential camps offered nationwide for abused, neglected and abandoned children. According to their parent organization’s Web site, the camps’ purpose is to give kids a healthy dose of hope that a positive experience with loving adult role models is possible, that they can succeed and that if the cycle of abuse can be broken for a week, it can be broken permanently.

These are lofty goals that found their footing this week in a theme that focused on Jesus as the Good Shepherd and incorporated Bible passages such as the parable of the lost sheep and Psalm 23 — all meant to send the message that “you’re never lost,” the Rev. Peeples says. “God always knows where you are, and you’re never alone ... All the children here are in the situation they’re in because their most basic, foundational relationship — that with their parents — was seriously broken. From a spiritual perspective, we want to impart that God doesn’t abandon you.”

This is a message especially important for children like the 8-year-old boy with abandonment issues who woke up after his first night at camp and began crying when he couldn’t find his counselor — known at Royal Family camps as a “special friend” — and thought he’d left for good. And then there are the kids who were taken from homes with meth labs. There are the kids with bipolar disorder or ADHD. And the biters. And the runners — those who take off, without any idea of where they’re going, when they feel threatened.

Tyson Huff, who served as a special friend for the seventh year this week, especially remembers a boy who was so heavily medicated he fell asleep during dinner — but who came alive as a completely different person after Marilyn McMillen, the camp nurse, received permission from his doctor to reduce his dosage. Mr. Huff remembers being terrified before his first camp, as he read information about his kids before they arrived, but knows now that just like the camper he was able to bond with after the boy was freed from his medicated stupor, the children aren’t just who they are on paper.

“They come to camp, they’re away from those fears and they’re different kids,” he says. “They feel safe here.”

Safe enough to go to Ms. McMillen, who has served as the camp nurse ever since retiring from full-time nursing 10 years ago, with pretend ailments — probably because they haven’t received much attention before for minor aches and pains.

“I’ve treated a lot of imaginary bug bites and scratches,” she says, adding that after word gets out she has “magic” gum (actually an antacid), “the next thing you know, half the camp’s got stomachaches.”

But these “stomachaches” don’t keep the kids from swimming and playing. Over the course of the week, they also perform in a talent show. They’re pampered in a tornado-shelter-turned-beauty-salon. They get to “shop” in God’s Store, which is filled with racks of new clothing, shoes and accessories they can have for free. They make memory books (something significant for kids who likely have very few photos of themselves) and they celebrate a collective birthday party. At this year’s camp, each child received an mp3 player containing songs they learned this week — including one that declares “I am a promise, I am a possibility, I am a promise with a capital ‘P’; I am a great big bundle of potentiality; and I am learning to hear God’s voice, and I am trying to make the right choices; I’m a promise to be anything God wants me to be.”

They also show promise for teaching some lessons of their own along the way.

“When you see a child you know has had a rough time,” says Marion Kearnes, a longtime volunteer known as a camp “grandma,” “and see them running and playing and really laughing, it does something to you. It puts joy in your heart.”

“We can learn from children about life,” the Rev. Peeples adds, “and these kids have a lot to teach us about resilience.”

Lifestyles reporter Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.