family camp

0Josh • 5th Jul 2004 • blog entries, cascades experences

So I know its been a while… I was hoping to keep the tradition of semi-daily blogging alive’ but I simply had NO free time over the past week. I started a few entries’ but never got past a few sentences. The past week has been crazy. Last week was the north pacific conference independence day family camp’ and there was about 500 people here at camp. The week started on Sunday afternoon’ everyone got back from their weekend break ‘ and we went to work turning cascades into a family camp facility. Everyone worked very hard. I headed up a group of counselors at madrona. By dinner time we had finished all the work. The next day was the ‘staff day’ at lake Lawrence in Yelm. It was pretty nice out and everyone had a good time. Lydia & I took off around 4:00 to go home. It was nice to have such a long break at home Monday night and tuesday. Hannah & Cephas joined us at the Sommermans Monday evening’ later Evan & Eric came over’ and then Jordan & Emily. A number of us played a exciting round of bocce ball. Tuesday’ my main goal was to pick up some Tevas and I got a pretty decent deal at REI. We headed back to camp Tuesday evening after a relaxing day at home.

Wednesday morning came’ and we were all back in the camp grove. Family campers had started to arrive’ even Tuesday night…although registration & check-in wasn’t supposed to start until around 4:00pm Wednesday. A lot of the week after that is a blur’ and all kind of is mashed together in my mind. I was in charge of PowerPoint/tech in the big top’ which was nice because then I got a chance to hear all the speakers.

The morning speaker was Rev. Henry Greenridge’ from Irvington Covenant Church in Portland. It was a church that I hadn’t heard of before this summer. Henry told us in his sermons about serving “Them” that his church is a mixed church. 60% is white’ 30% African American’ and 10% is Hispanic/Asian. Its pretty cool that the church has been around for 15 years and is still going strong. The evening speaker was Dr. James K. Bruckner’ a professor from north park seminary’ and a family friend. His son Ben was my first camper ever when I was here as a counselor’ and his other son Luke worked at camp my second summer. Jim spoke about God’s creation’ and how God can speak to us through it. Jim was born and raised in the Alaska covenant’ so it was great to hear stories about some places that we will be at soon!

Family camp also consisted of doing hundreds of trash runs’ and running the (primarily) empty water slide for 2 hours a day. It was also fun to hang out with friends. Evan & Eric came out and ended up spending two nights in our trailer on the couch’ and we had the whole “has been” team there for family camp as well. (Emily & Shannon’ there was your plug on the highly esteemed northslope blog).

I’m sure there is more to blog about’ but that is all for now. I might jot down some of the more thought provoking things from last week if I get a chance…but for now’ a recap will have to do.

Peace.

edit 7/8/2004 – spellchecked.