Exciting Adventures with Cody

So We Got Some Snow

2012-03-05T19:44:00.001-08:00

The weather. We have all kinds of methods for checking it and preparing for it. But no one can ever decide how much or when. Well Friday night we all knew something was coming. To prepare we shoveled off several of the sketchy roofs around camp (West Side Dining Hall, and Old Headquarters). The snow didn't even wait for us to fully deliberate, it started early in the afternoon. It was on and off until the evening when it started dumping on us. That night at chapel I joined the other Seasonal Staff as we tried to take a lap around the East side cabin circle with shovels.

While Shoveling I noticed the power drop off and on a couple times. Power going out is usually not a big deal around here. The programers pride themselves on weathering any type of weather, whether it's good or bad. So I didn't worry too much about it. Well sure enough, we had no power all day. In a surprise twist camp was cancelled. Because of the cold weather and the lack of power the campers were sent home after dinner on Saturday night.

So we had an adventure on Saturday and Sunday night. Several families head south for the warmth and comfort of family or friends, but many of us stayed around camp. The Ford's and the seasonal staff basically take over the East Side Dining Hall. Because of the generator we're able to play the Wii and watch movies while maintaining the comforts of heat and hot water. I feel it's the church in Acts. We have a lot more modern comforts, but we're still sharing electronics, food, shelter, and company.

Power returned in my trailer on Sunday night so I enjoyed my own bed. Today I went out to enjoy the snow while I still can. With the weather calling for warmer temperatures, the snow might not last long. So I busted out the snowshoes. I went into the National Forest, got lost a little bit, then found my way to the Northstar Bowl, and Eagle's Point. These sites are familiar to summer staff, but in the Winter they are almost completely different. Here are some pics:

The West boundary, near Thunder Express.

The Northstar Bowl

Endless trees.

I think of Job 38:22. Or Chris Tomlin's song referencing that verse.

So the camping season is over. Now it's time for big projects! I've been getting lax on my pictures, but I think with a project going on I'll get the bug for taking pictures back. So look for some pictures of the East Side Dining Hall over the next weeks.

Trees!

2012-02-27T14:37:00.001-08:00

More trees falling around here. With the Winter retreat season wrapping up, Mike Baker and I are going after all the trees that are marked around camp. Some of them are in prominent places around camp like the West Side Ballfield and the East Side Chapel. This means there are signs and fences and tetherball poles that we need to avoid. So we used the Skytrak to give some of the trees a push in the right direction. Most of the time Mike just puts a notch in the tree and cuts it so that it drops right where he wants it.

This one is on the way down.

All this cutting creates a mess, but with the help of Dan Haines and Mike Alchin we make quick work of it. The trick becomes getting it to burn in the wet/snowy weather we've been having. We discovered a couple of good tricks. The first one is right out of Tim Houston's Thursday night camp out book: Start small, then work your way up slowly. The second is to run into the woods, tip over a dead pine tree, and use that to sustain the fire until the wet stuff is cooked dry. Then it just needs someone to shuffle it around every once and a while.

This is the big mess. We get most of it pretty quickly, but the smallest of the brush is hard to gather.

The burn pit takes some work, but I think it's sort of therapeutic.

There was still a lot of small brush laying around on the East Side Chapel driveway, but about 6 inches of snow fell on top of it, effectively saving us the trouble of cleanup for some time. With that snow came the assurance that our last two weekends would really be Winter camp. Barring an abnormal amount of sun and warm temperatures, we should be ready for the last weekend now with a little bit of touching up on the tubing runs.

If we aren't moving snow onto the tubing hill, it seems like we're moving it off of everything else. So instead of loading up trucks with snow, most of the staff spent Friday plowing or removing snow from their areas of responsibility. For me that's the West Side of camp. I share about half of that with Mike Baker, while Reuben, Kevin and Jon Ford clean up the other part of West Side. Since we were a little scattered this weekend I just ran the snowblower all over the West Side. Thankfully somebody (Danny VanOrman?) used the tractor snowblower on the main paths, leaving me to take pass around camp with the smaller snow blower. In the meantime Mike cleaned up the buildings in our area, and we were able to make it much easier to traverse the West Side.

My view for about 3 hours on Friday afternoon. Thanks for the Ice Armor mittens mom!

So I'm thankful for snow this weekend, and hoping for a little bit more now. I finally can get my snowshoes out for at least a little bit. One last cleaning this season, one more retreat, and then it's on to Spring at Camp Barakel.

As the Winter Passes

2012-02-20T20:15:00.000-08:00

I spent the first part of the week in and returning from Chicago. It was kind of crazy, but I think the trip was worth it. I watched the Red Wings win their 20th consecutive home win with some friends and then I had lunch with Tim (Youth Pastor at Garrison Hills) on Wednesday. Made it back just in time to join in on a staff potluck and then join in with Luke and Randy Harris at a Kirtland Community College basketball game over in Mio.

The rest of the week was a flurry of cleaning mixed with some tree cutting. We also cleaned up the brush pile that's been piled up for a while. A couple of the trees we dropped were right over the fence near the West Side basketball court. With some help from the Skytrak and some crafty cutting by Mike Baker we made it work without much trouble. Then we spent a solid hour tending the burn pile to get the wet wood going and eventually we burned it down to just about nothing. Here's some low quality video:

This weekend was the first combined combined teen retreat. That means that both sides of camp come together on the East side for a combined chapel. The weather gave us just enough snow to keep the tubing hill going, and that meant a fast couple runs this weekend. Don Jackson was the speaker this weekend and he's always a favorite of the campers. I was excited this weekend when a package showed up from my Dad's house. Inside of it was my first electric razor! Dad put in some pre shave and post shave stuff along with some "English Leather" cologne. I don't know about that part, but we'll see what happens.

English Leather.....

Two more winter weekends. I'm looking forward to them, but i'll be happy to get some normal weekends in the Spring. Plus some trips to the southern half of the state. The Spring will also bring the end of the high school basketball season. I've been running clock for most of the girl's home games this year. Tonight was a crazy overtime game between Fairview's JV and Alpena's Freshman team. It's pretty impressive that a Class D school would push a game into overtime against a good Class A school.

So we carry on here. Pray with me for the campers, speakers and the part time staff that are coming up for the next couple weekends.

An Impromptu Trip

2012-02-13T18:31:00.000-08:00

This is one of those weeks. So much has happened I can hardly remember it all really. What did I do on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday? Well we spent time cutting trees near the highway, and trimming up an enormous pine tree that fell down near the West Side Waterfront. I cleaned Pine and Tamarack cabins as well. Mike Baker and I also replaced a 4x4 that had been whacked by about three different people.

We found a note on the pole reading, "Timothy G Houston- At your service"

On Friday the maintenance crew joined together with the programers to move snow from various snow drifts over to the tubing hill. With three trucks we were able to thoroughly cover both of the tubing runs and the tow rope with something like 10-14 loads over 2 hours (someone could estimate better perhaps...). It's one of the most grueling tasks that we have at camp, but if the weather pans out it can save the hill for the weekend. This particular Friday it dropped about 3 inches of snow right on top of our work. Just what we needed!

So the snow came just in time for the couples weekend. The rest of the state also received snow on Friday, but it wasn't as welcome on I-75 where a large pile up of cars hindered many of the campers. The chapel on the West Side (Teen Retreat) was actually delayed for the arrival of several groups. The vast majority of campers weathered the weather and enjoyed the benefits of the fresh snowfall at camp.

Now for the reason I can hardly remember the early part of the week! Some of my coworkers encouraged me to take a trip to Chicago. Lately Chicago has been a good place for me visit because Rob and Elizabeth live just north of the city. Makes it easy to stay here. Between them and a couple friends at Moody I always know I have a lot of exciting things to do here. Any other friends that happen to show up are also a bonus.

I left camp Saturday evening, joined in the worship service at Garrison Hills, then burst forth towards Chicago on Sunday afternoon. Now I'm here and I'm having a great time. Here are the pictures from so far:

The city from the 96th floor of the Hancock Building.

General Logan. From memory I think he was a competent General from the army of the West.

My new favorite president. He barely beats out John Adams.

Nothing!

Hijinks

2012-02-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

This week was full of fun at Camp Barakel. Mike Baker and I were moving more of the animal mounts around and that just seems to lead to jokes. The story behind all this is that a man that loved camp passed away last year and left us about 8 mounts that we wanted to incorporate in several buildings. The shuffling moved quite a bit around in the West Side Chapel with a couple changes in the East Side Chapel as well. The most notable change was the addition of two white tail deer into the great room of Crosscut Lodge. They fit in really well with the rustic look of the walls and saws.

The new addition to this massive bumper.

The snow here is the issue lately. The programers spent a lot of time moving snow to the hill and it was just the trick through this long, warm week. The result was one of the fastest weekends of tubing that I've seen here. The icy runs developed some bumps that kids were catching some air from. I thought I was going to fall off several times when I tried it out. Now the hill is coming up against a long week that could scorch it. We're hoping to save it, but there are a lot of other things that campers will be able to enjoy this week no matter the weather.

This might be the best the hill looks all week. We'll see.

It's not all about hi jinks here, this was weekend number five for winter camp and now we're over half way done. Now we have a Couples Retreat and then several youth retreats in the next weekends. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more friends come up, but more importantly there are over a thousand campers still planning to come this Winter. Every single one will have the opportunity to hear the Gospel.

So join us in praying for the campers that are coming. Also keep in mind our staff, especially during the cold and flu season.

Chicago Excitement

2012-01-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

This week went by in quite a rush. I spent all of Monday cleaning Tamarack and Pine cabins so that I could join Dave and Phyllis Douglas on a recruiting trip to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. We had a lot of rain and a melt that made the roads super icy. After getting the truck almost stuck a couple times I grabbed my skates in the afternoon and skated over to the Brown's. So much fun. I wish I could ice skate to get around camp all the time.

Puzzling after the ice skating.

We left for Chicago on Tuesday morning. I'm not a big city person, but I do enjoy the novelty of it periodically. Plus Rob is in Chicago, and that makes it worth the trip right there. I had Giordano's pizza for the first time on Tuesday night. It was tasty and filling. The next morning we tried the Yolk, which is a breakfast specialty place just a block away from Moody.

Yum.

I didn't just eat in Chicago though. I also spent a lot of time with Rob, and Dan Krueger (summer staff at camp in 2011). I found a nice room at Moody called the Fireside room. It's a room where you can't talk. And yes, I voluntarily went in there. I enjoyed the quiet while I slept and read and slept and read for hours.

I didn't just sleep and read in Chicago either. I also stood up at Camp Barakel's booth for Campfest. It's harder than it looks to stand for hours while people come by and check out your booth. It seemed that most of the folks at camp fest were looking for "their" camp and they kind of hustled right to it. There were several people that came looking for information, but most of our visitors were former summer staff that were happy to see their camp represented.

This is when I was getting tired of the city. I had too many backpacks and was jammed in a train with a ton of people. It was actually impressive to watch Rob read from his e-reader without any poles to grab onto during the jerks of the train.

On the way home we stopped off in Dimondale to pick up a new camp car. It's an Oldsmobile Alero very similar to mine only this one was white. Someone said the white paint makes it the "good" twin to my "evil" black car. I've never had so many warning lights in a car before, even with my old beater car from high school.

Nothing serious, but I was seriously praying for safety on the way up.

Once back at camp I joined Mike Baker in hanging some bearskin rugs in the West Side Chapel and then Dan Haines joined us to cut and split some wood out behind the East side parking lot. This weekend was a little different because we had a Sr High retreat on the West and a Jr High retreat on the East. I think many youth groups brought their whole group, then split them between the two sides of the lake.

So camp continues. We received a little snow this weekend and hope for more in the coming weeks. The tubing hill is looking good so far, and we're doing what we can to keep the skiing open. Please pray for us as we continue to strive for the Gospel here at Camp Barakel.

Winter is Happening

2012-01-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

Now is the time when Winter just kind of flies by. Snow is on the ground. Campers are skiing and tubing. I'm doing a lot of dishes and feeling exhausted most weekends. It's a good season.

Well first thing last week Brad was leaving and he smashed his truck into a tree. The roads get pretty icy after the sun beats on them all afternoon and that combined with a downhill turned into this:

Yep. That's about all you need to see.

The good news is that he was ok. The airbags went off, but the seat belt held him back from getting slapped by one. Part of my week was spent helping to get stuff out of the truck and scavenging the tires and the tool box in the bed of the truck. The tires worked out well and will hopefully be thrown onto one of the trucks we use at camp for going to town.

Cleaning and sharpening the chainsaws.

This week Mike and I needed to work on the chainsaws. We put them through a lot of wood, so cleaning and sharpening becomes a normal task. This week we dropped several large trees in behind one of the staff houses. It would have been pretty comical to watch us climbing up and down the very steep hill in at least 14 inches of snow. A couple stories came out of this one adventure.

Me cutting a tree down. I was aiming too high above my notch.
Looks like a monster was on the loose or something.

First, I was trying to clean up the brush around the base of a tree so I could maneuver more easily around it. Sometimes brush grabs the chain and pulls it off the bar. Well that happened and I felt it tugging on my jeans before I even knew what was happening. Thankfully it didn't get through to my leg, but it did leave a nice hole in my jeans and a little bit of a hole in my long johns.

These are from the old Girl's Dorm. We cut them up for Terry to make sweet tables out of them.

The other great moment was when Mike almost dropped a tree on me. We're pretty cautious when finishing off a tree. We keep an eye on each other and make sure we're not in the path of the tree. Well I was at the bottom of the hill and watching him notch and back cut on a tree. He had aimed it to go sideways on the hill, but it decided to come straight down to me. I ran away about 5 steps and turned just in time to see it land about 10 steps behind me. Whew.

In general it was kind of fun. We had a lot more snow this week so I spent a fair amount of time cleaning. I enjoy cleaning in one main way: I can listen to music and sermons. So I listened to my new David Crowder Band cd (which has been on repeat for the whole week basically), and I snagged a couple of Alistair Begg sermons.

This is Winter. Lots of work as the time flies by. I enjoyed the last Father/Son retreat and now I'm looking forward to more people coming and going over the next several weeks.

Finally the Snow is Here

2012-01-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

For those of you who followed the fire we had in December, our wood supply is looking good. We took a lot of trees down in the maintenance yard and cut them up for boiler wood this weekend. It was a lot of fun and we had some major help from some of Mike Baker's nephews.

They were able to lift some huge chunks of wood onto the splitter.

Because of the extra help and extra work over the past couple of weeks we've been able to basically catch up on our wood supply already. The splitter has saved us countless maul strikes. Now Randy is thinking we have just about enough wood split to get us through the retreat season for the boilers.

The Skytrak lines them up, and Mike Alchin cuts them up.

Some of the guys kept the brush pile going all day.

We left about 12 stumps around the yard. Now it's open for some landscaping and a redesign.

When we weren't moving wood around, we had a stove to replace in the East Side Dining Hall. Last week one of the stoves caught on fire through what I'm told was an electrical issue. Thankfully there was no damage to the dining hall, but the stove sustained too much damage to fix it. So this week we moved the old stove out and then put the new stove back in. It was one of those lifting things where you can hardly get enough guys to carry it around.

I think Kieth spent a lot of time wondering exactly how we'd sort all of this out.

And finally... SNOW! We got the snow we needed to run the tubing hill this weekend. It loaded up all the trees so they sagged real low. Very much a Winter Wonderland for the weekend. With that came a lot of work on Friday to clean it all up. Brad Smith, and 6 kids from Mike's family really helped out, cleaning up the whole West Side of camp before lunch. It was a great effort.

Something about 6 inches of snow on a tether ball caught my eye.

So the snow was here for the Father/Son and Winter Teen retreats. It was neat to see so many people I recognized this weekend. I had about 3 campers on the East Side and several folks that I've just met over the years here at camp. Several of the dish workers were former summer staffers, and of course I was excited to see Rob and Elizabeth helping out this weekend.

Tom Harmon and Brian Harmon were the speakers this weekend and I was really excited to have both of them here. They speak so much differently, but they both are very clear about the Gospel message which I understand was well received this weekend. Praise the Lord for that!

The sun trying to break through the clouds on Monday morning.

Winter?

2012-01-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

They say it's Winter here, but it's definitely not what I expect out of Winter. We had a fair amount of snow as the weekend approached, but 50 degree weather on Friday torched the snow off the hill. Thankfully the ice rinks held up well for the Father/Son and College/Career Winter Retreats.

Staff kids and seasonal at the first hockey outing of the year.

Camp seems like it would be crippled without snow, but it really isn't. With cold weather the inside options become even more fun, and the messages in chapel are just as penetrating as ever. Because of the College/Career Retreat I was running pretty hard this weekend trying to catch up with people and keep up with my responsibilities. I was able to play broomball with some friends from years past and we won the tournament with much of the team we had last year.

As for projects, we took a bit of a break from wood this week to hit a couple different things around camp. We tore down a shed near the West Side Trading Post (that I didn't even know was there) and carried the "jail" shed away from the East Side Trading Post.

West Side Shed. We kicked most of the boards out. It was fun.

The East Side Shed was tricky to pick up and move. But we managed to keep it in one piece.

Dan Haines put together a small (but heavy) fence in the Archery and Riflery areas on West Side. The goal is to make it so that no one can be standing anywhere near where the archers are shooting. I think he accomplished that, and I also believe this fence could take several shots from a battering ram.

This thing was super heavy for lifting. That's me creeping up top with Dan's camera.

Extra curricularly I ran the clock at a girls basketball game and welcomed Kevin Pierpont and Reuben Peck to the trailer as Seasonal Staff for the Programing department. It should go well because they are clean guys, but time will tell how true and consistent that is.

I'm also leading a Bible/Book study that Phyllis Douglas organized. We had our first meeting Sunday evening with 8 guys from Fairview. Our book is "The Measure of a Young Man" and we were able to set a reading plan after reading through the introduction. All the guys stayed for a while to play/watch some different games. I'm looking forward to going over the first unit next week.

So it's busy here. We're praying for snow, but we're ready for anything at Camp Barakel.

Now for Another Year

2012-01-01T15:53:00.000-08:00

This week was mostly unproductive with some spikes in the action over the weekend. So how about we focus on the action? Thursday I played volleyball and had a blast. I'm always talking about how little running or sports I get in on at camp in the Fall so volleyball was good. Then Friday I spent most of the day working on my car with the Youth Pastor at my church, Tim Wygant. My car has a lot of humming and we figured it was a wheel bearing. So we started looking into it on that raining Friday.

Tim working on the lug nuts.

Well we figured out quickly that the brakes were about as low as they could possibly get without making any screeching or grinding. So we grabbed brakes and a wheel bearing down at good old Autozone. That's when the next problem occurred. We couldn't get the hub nut off to get down to the wheel bearing. We had a good socket but even with a huge pipe we couldn't get it to budge. When the axle started to look like it was getting stressed we gave up for the day.

You can see the hub nut. I have some ideas for how to attack it next time.

Now I'm just hoping (and praying) that everything holds together as I get ready to attempt another shot at it here at camp. If needed I can just take in to the Fairview Garage to have Cliff take a look at the whole deal.

After getting the car back together I rolled out for a Saturday Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Grand Rapids. I knew a fair amount of people there and enjoyed seeing old friends while staying active. My team finished second, but more importantly it was a pretty chill day. After that I drove over to Rochester to celebrate the New Year before heading up to camp this afternoon.

The first thing I got when I arrived was a package (and some nice Christmas cards from some of the staff). So I figured the package was a shirt I purchased for my dad. It ran late and didn't make Christmas, but I wasn't too worried about that. He still would get it. When I opened it to see exactly what I had purchased, this is what I found:

A medium petite dress valued at $64.

So yeah. Probably not a great gift for dad. I checked the slip and it has my real order with the proper price. Now I just need to figure out how to return this lovely dress sometime.

Now it's 2012. I'll be here at Camp Barakel for the rest of the year (Lord willing) and I'm hoping God will open hearts as we present the Gospel through 4 more seasons of camping.

Thanks for following!

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T12:43:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed a Christmas with Mom this morning. She got a new laptop and a Boz Scaggs cd. I got a couple blankets and some clothes. Oh yeah, and a sweet surprise from Rob and Elizabeth that will be revealed on the tubing hill (or more likely at the Thunder Express with this lack of snow). After church it's just a scattering of movies and basketball games for the rest of the day.

That's a box full of supplies from my church under the tree.

My favorite Christmas song is by Relient K. Here are some selected lines:

*****
Because here is where you're finding me,
in the exact same place as New Year's eve
And from the lack of my persistency
We're less than half as close as I want to be.

And the first time that you opened your eyes did you realize that you would be my Savior?
And the first breath that left Your lips, did you know that it would change this world forever?

To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That you were born so I might live
To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me

And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life.
*****

Reading it doesn't do it any justice (Youtube Link). I've listening to this song and reflecting on the season and the new year that will be following it.

Merry Christmas!

So it's almost Christmas

2011-12-18T15:53:00.000-08:00

With Christmas approaching this was my last week at camp for the year. We had a lot of work to do, hoping to get the freezer and cooler running in the East Side Dining Hall. As we finished the glassboard on the walls we had to start up on the doorways. Unfortunately when we removed the doors the metal got a little beat up. So Mike and I had to figure out how to bend up some metal casing for the freezer door.

The freezer door with newly bent metal.

Mike doing what he does with that Skillsaw.

Well we finished Thursday afternoon and all the freezer and cooler were working well. We spent Friday morning cleaning up all the tools and equipment. Dan Haines shampooed Room H, hopefully cleaning out the smell enough that we can use it.

Outside of work I finished up my present wrapping and it went a lot better as I kept working on it. It was nice to put some presents under the tree Titus dropped off in the trailer.

Presents stacked up beneath the tree. Most of them are given out already.

I left Friday afternoon for a trip through the Capital building in Lansing. I'd never considered checking it out, but it was a lot of fun to see. So several camp Barakel folks met up there for a tour and a bit of a party afterwards. That was followed by some Saturday ice skating and the 2011 Barakel Bash.

The Bash is a great opportunity to catch up with the Summer Staff from over the years. I enjoyed some basketball and singing. Not to mention running around with Rob for a while. Now it's time to take a week off and chill out at home. Without any snow on the ground I might even play some disc golf.

The view passing the trailer.

Until next time.

Another Fire

2011-12-11T10:34:00.001-08:00

So we've had some excitement here at camp this week. A wood shed holding a lot of wood for our boilers burned down on Monday night. We're thankful there were no injuries and nothing was lost that some hard work can't replace over the next months. I'll go into the details of the fire below, but first I'll go over my week at camp.

Spray on insulation. Very messy, but very effective.

Believe it or not we actually have more pressing matters to attend to than the fire here with the maintenance crew. Now that the insulation has been sprayed in, we need to put up glassboard over our freezer and cooler in the East Side Dining Hall. Once that's done we can fix up one of the hotel style rooms that had some water damage from the leaking. With holiday weeks approaching and Winter camp following closely behind... we have to get this stuff done.

Benches under the new porch of the ESDH.

In the meantime Terry Shaw has put in some hard work on some new benches and a counter under the new porch on the ESDH. I'm a big fan of this because it gives a couple more eating options for the campers and staff when weather permits. I hope to enjoy meals and some relaxing moments on these benches this Spring and Summer.

Beautiful wrapping job.

I haven't wrapped anything in years! My mom usually does it for me (I think she enjoys wrapping things) which has enabled me to ignore wrapping since I was a kid and would try to help out for fun. This was my first attempt and it did the job. I didn't even have to use any of my masking tape for it! Hopefully no one is offended by poorly wrapped gifts this Christmas.

Now for the fire. I'll go into the details, my role in it, and I'll try to explain some points of confusion. First the story of the fire, then how it will affect us over the next months. This will be a lot of words to read, so unless you're really interested in the fire I might drone on here.

What remains of the woodshed.

So on Monday evening I was over at the Ford's house. They had treated me to some hamburgers and I was about to go to the first home game for Fairview's boys team. Right when we were leaving (6:35 pm) Mike Baker came up to the door and told us that there was a fire in the Carpenter Shop area (Side note: This caused some folks to think it WAS the carpenter shop, but Mike was just trying to put us in that area. We have a lot of wood boxes and wood sheds and he didn't want us going to the wrong place). It turns out he was going to the West Side for some milk and (like many of us) didn't bring his phone with him. On the way he couldn't help but see the orange glow. So that's why he returned to get his phone and tell the closest people what was going on.

While Jon and I hurried over to the Fire Barn to get the fire trucks out Petie Brown was notified and she started calling every staff man at camp. The trucks all started up great (once I found the choke in mine), which is a blessing because the equipment is old. Jon left with the Fire Bus (carrying turnout gear and much of the fireman equipment we use), then I followed with the fire truck. Jeremy Linsley was right on my tail with the water truck. It was probably one of the fastest responses I've seen us perform.

Upon entering the Maintenance Yard it was awesome. Not in the good way, but in the way you kind of look on the fire in awe. Flames to the treetops. Wow. This is when I realized it was the wood shed and it was really quite a relief. A wood shed doesn't have any people in it. No valuables. Just wood. This means that unless it suddenly spreads, no one would be in harms way for this fire. It was safe for the moment.

We also lost a wood box we use to transport wood. Here's the frame of the new one.

To try and keep it safe we started unraveling hose, preparing to wet down the area and keep the fire from spreading. The men took turns spraying down the couple trees in the immediate area, the rest of the lumber and the fire itself. I really think it would have been harder to keep it contained, but the tin roof had collapsed on it, smothering it to some degree while preventing embers from flying all over the place. While some folks were hosing the fire down, several of us were moving equipment away in case the fire spread.

Honestly, that is pretty much it for our response to the fire. The Fairview Fire Department showed up and helped us contain it. I actually left to go to the basketball game with some of the Ford's and we made tip off at about 7:30 pm. It was decided that we'd let the fire burn itself out rather than attempting to put it out. This was nice because then the fire pretty much cleans itself up for us. I returned for my shift watching the fire at 3am. Titus Brown joined me and we spent the morning pushing back the ashes and isolated chunks of wood. Just trying to make it all burn down low, while recovering nails, screws and some other miscellaneous pieces of metal from the fire.

Now for the cause. We don't know for absolute sure, but in all likely hood it was our own brush fire. On Monday we had been burning scrappy brush in the morning and stretching up until about 2pm. When doing this we come and go a lot, keeping an eye on it when we're there. Well the last guys to take a look at the fire saw it puffing a little bit of smoke at 4pm and 5:15pm.

The new wood box completed and filled.

People have questioned why the burn pit is so close to our fire wood, and it's a legitimate question. In my opinion, there are few better spots for the burn pit. It's about as far away from the thick woods as you can get, and the closest building was the wood shed. I think of the other buildings we could have lost and I personally prefer the wood shed over any other building of this size. (Too bad it couldn't just be the Hillbilly Porch!).

Another question I've heard a lot of is how wood did we lose? How much money in heating? The answer is arguable a little bit. My guess is that it was something near 35 cords of wood (it depends on the math). Whatever the exact number, it was a lot of wood. About 90% of this wood was used on our boiler that heats the East Side Dining Hall. Very little was used in regular fireplaces such as the West Side Dining Hall, or chapels. We won't spend extra on heating though, cause we still have time to cut more wood and keep the boiler stocked.

What we didn't lose is the hours of service from Engineers. The high school guys that cut wood. It's a perfect example of what makes it through a fire and what doesn't. The work they did is still work done to the glory of God. And we'll have to do it all over again, but still to His glory.

So now we'll be out cutting a lot of wood. We've already finished a new box for transporting wood (I scattered pictures above to break up the paragraphs), and camp purchased a wood splitter to help us prepare for the Winter. Mike Alchin has spent most of the week out in the woods cutting down the dead trees around camp, getting ready to chop it up and burn it. The last two Winters I spent a lot of time in Crosscut, cleaning when I could. Now it'll be cutting wood and cleaning most of the time.

If you made it this far then good job! I've seen 4 fires here at camp, and I've been partially responsible for 3 of them (1- Warming hut: Started the wood stove and the chimney caught on fire. 2- Pine Cabin: I was cleaning and one of the fluorescent light bulbs malfunctioned, catching on fire. 3- Wood Shed: Spent most of the day tending the brush pit). So hopefully that's it for a while! Thanks for sticking with me.

The Second Annual Camp Barakel Fun Run

2011-12-04T18:11:00.001-08:00

I don't get into as many sports as I like around here, but this weekend was the big fun run. The few crazy joggers at camp run 6 miles from Fairview to the office. This year I joined Dave Douglas and Dan Haines on the frosty, rainy run. I finished at 51 minutes, and I'm not sure what that means. It was a lot of fun though and I love getting out and being active. Back to the work week though.

This week the work had a little bit of variation. The freezer and cooler started out the week pretty well gutted and ended the week with new tile and glassboard around all the walls that we can do so far. Some of the walls will have to wait for the new insulation to be sprayed in before we can close them off. Again, the whole goal is to get some air tight insulation that will help to keep moisture out of the walls.

Crisp and clean looking new glassboard.

We're approaching a time crunch because the retreats are coming up at the start of January. That means we need to try and get everything back together as soon as we can so that the cooks can get their freezer and cooler stocked. So Dan Haines is plugging away at the tile and I got in on some of that. We used a pink membrane between the cement board and the tile to help prevent cracking and leaking. In the midst of the tiling we also had to rip off some of the siding to give the insulation guy access inside the wall. So now the back side of the dining hall looks a little funny with a large chunk of wall ripped off.

It looks like Dan's throwing up pepto bismol.

New access to the freezer and cooler.

Brad Smith came up on Thursday afternoon and he helped out with some tree cutting and brush cleanup on Friday. We put some bricks in my truck to help with the slick roads. After that we took the Skytrak out onto the ski trails to push down and clean up a tree that has been hanging over the trail for quite a while. Then we watched Mike Alchin and his friend work on a tree that was hanging over Arrowhead Lodge. They had all the gadgets to help keep the tree off of the roof. So Brad and I helped to clean up the brush as they took down pieces of the tree.

Mike Alchin and his fancy ropes.

Full extension on the Skytrak.

It was a productive week. All the tile was finished and Dan's working on the grout now. Now it's just a matter of the insulation guy filling up the walls and coming through to button everything up. It was a fun weekend with Brad up here and the Fun Run. We also joined in on the VIP party at the hardware store. It's the big event of the town and everyone comes out to go from store to store. Weeks are flying by and we're trying to push through these projects.

Thanksgiving Shenanigans

2011-11-27T07:07:00.001-08:00

I'm reading a book called "Team of Rivals" right now. It's about Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet members. One of them spent 15 minutes every night reviewing the days activities. Well that's kind of what I try to do every week. This was a particularly hard one.

This is probably what I look like while trying to remember things.

So I'm thankful for pictures that remind me of what happened. On Tuesday of this week I left Battle Creek at 6am so that I could meet the rest of the maintenance crew in Houghton Lake. We spent the day reviewing Timber Wolf Lake and Springhill Camps. It was a fun opportunity see how other camps build and maintain their facilities.

The plane dorm at Springhill.

The inside of the plane dorm.

The whole trip was kind of interesting. They also had very nice dorms. These camps have nice things, but they don't have the feel that Camp Barakel has. From looking at these couple camps I find myself thinking that their facilities are great, but it's not really camping anymore. It's a conference center. That didn't stop us from checking out their maintenance department and having some fun during the visit...

Timber Wolf Lake has Go-Karts. Unbelievable!

This is me before I lap everyone. Believe that!

So after visiting the camps we headed out to dinner and I hustled home. It was quite a long day. The other highlights of the trip included playing volleyball and basketball with some of my friends. Competitive, organized sports are something I dearly miss at Camp. Both of them went really well, but my lungs need some stretching out.

Me and Mom went over to the Ramer's (her friends that live around the corner from us) for Thanksgiving. There were only 6 people there and I enjoyed that aspect of it. It's good to have a relatively quiet and calm day to eat and watch the Lions.

Now I'm preparing to drive back up to camp tonight. Happy Thanksgiving!

Mousing Strategy

2011-11-20T21:24:00.001-08:00

Mice are a problem in the trailer. They don't have to be, but the door doesn't close very easily and people have issues double checking this kind of thing. So over the summer I begged the folks staying in the trailer to keep it all the way closed, but every time I went by it wasn't closed. So now I have the mice. Last year they were terrible, pooping all over. This year I might have figured them out.

Look at all that cereal! That's only about half of it.

So between the fridge and those drawers there is a crack. I have come to believe this is a main artery in the mouse traveling network. I believe this because I've snagged about 5 of them there in 10 days. I also haven't seen any poop anywhere all Fall. So either the YAPS (summer college kids) potty trained them, or they aren't gallivanting around my trailer freely. I blame my trap placement.

Other than that we're digging up some major stuff in the East Side Dining Hall. Everywhere we pull down the walls we find more moisture, so we've chased it right into the walls. So now we have a skeleton of a freezer left over. In the basement I took out the drop ceiling and all the insulation under there. After that I posted a couple fans to dry out the wood.

The ceiling in the basement.

Big fans. I'd like to make a quadrocoptor out of 4 of these.

Right now it's Dan Haines, Mike Baker and myself working on this, but when the time starts getting crunched down I think we'll drag Mike Alchin in. All of this stuff has to be back together by the 2nd of January. That's about 3 full work weeks (full meaning 2 out of 3 of us will be there while the others use up their last vacation days). Breaking the tile was a grueling part of the process that we tried to make fun. I tried duel wielding hammers and it became a tiring mess of dust and flying tile chunks. Making the best of it.

Now for the weekend. I packed things in, so I'll just rip through them here. I left camp Friday afternoon and headed for Rochester. There I went to the joint birthday parties of Karen Morgan and Aaron Jerome. It was a blast that kept me up til about 3am. Then I headed out for Battle Creek at 6am. (It's not a Cody road trip if I don't do some major driving on 3 hours of sleep).

In BC I went to the State Volleyball Finals where I watched St Phil win their 6th Class D title. I stuck around for a couple other matches. The Class A was notable because those girls just pound the tar out of the ball. After that I went to the annual Holiday Parade where I saw the Linsley's (from Camp) and the Riegel's (from home).

Today (Sunday) I enjoyed a morning at church, some good food at a Fundraiser at Pizza Sam's, and then volleyball at the Y Center. I really miss competitive sports by being at camp, so I was thankful the Penrod's needed some people for their volleyball team. It felt good to get out there and crush some volleyballs.

As you can see I'm traveling. So pictures become scarce and stories become crazy and staggered. I'm having a good time though. God is good. Pray I keep my car in between the ditches and that I use my time home for the Kingdom (not just for me!).

Going Inside

2011-11-13T18:17:00.001-08:00

November is treating us well. The temperatures are cold in the morning, then nice weather most afternoons. Except for about 2 days of hard rain. That pushed us inside for a lot of this week, so me and Mike Baker worked on new trash can lids. While camp is replacing the trash cans over the next years, we need lids for the old ones in the meantime. After several designs we settled in and made 20 new lids to cover all the West side trash cans. Mike Alchin seemed to enjoy spending some time in the carpenter shop too. He was working on some plumbing for the West Side Bath House.

Mike Baker gets excited when we stop planning, and start cutting up wood.

Mike Alchin has a nice little work station.

A new project is starting to take shape in the East Side Dining Hall. We're taking apart the walls around the freezer to try to shore up some moisture issues. It turns out there is some condensation that has been soaking into the insulation. So while most of the maintenance crew is taking some time off for the Fall Break (for Fairview schools) I'm plugging away on some of these walls trying to get some fresh air in there. Now it's a race to get everything back in working order for the retreats in January.

It looks really odd without the drywall.

So we keep working in the off season at camp. This weekend I joined the Bakers family vacation at Avalanche Bay. It's a water park that's part of the Boyne Mountain resort area. I'm feeling like a wreck after a day of climbing the stairs up to the different slides. Me and Matthew Baker hit one of them about 10 times in a row during a slow spell in the afternoon. Lydia provided fantastic food for lunch. It was a full day. About 16 hours all told.

I feel like it's about half way through December. That and the time change has kind of messed with my head. But I'm cruising through work, enjoying this settled down November. Now if we can just get wiped out under the snow next month.... we'll be all set for January.

Driving Again

2011-11-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

It's my big driving season coming up. A lot happened, so I'll try to get through it here kind of quickly. On Tuesday I went down to Spring Arbor University to talk to people about Camp Barakel. After that we had a small gathering at the Parlour in Jackson. That was followed by Camp's annual business meeting in Okemos. Kind of a full day, but it was a lot of fun to see all the different summer staff and board members.

It took us a while to pick out our treats.

I settled on a Peanut Butter cup sundae.

At camp we've been working on different small projects, including a fair amount of work on roofs. Mike Baker and I have been chasing leaks around several of the roofs. We also spent a while on Arrowhead and Snowshoe to clean off the roofs and kill some of the moss.

After the work week I ran down to a Spiritual Warfare Conference in Perry where Tom Harmon was speaking. I enjoyed seeing lots of friends at this 2 day affair, then I hustled over to Battle Creek where I was able to see several friends that night. I played drums in the morning at Garrison Hills and made a run for the east side of the state. There I joined in on a Mexican themed party at the Houston's house. We played cornhole, night frisbee and a lot of Taboo. Thanks to Dave and Tim for throwing the thing together, and then letting me stay the night there.

Construction!

I left Detroit at 6:15am and now I'm blogging at the McDonalds in Mio just before returning to camp to work. So you can see how I've been driving around a lot. I'm sure it'll keep increasing as the Holidays come around. Oh, and without retreats on the weekends we're back down to working 5 day weeks. So I'll probably be blogging on Sundays now. Just for your information.

Thanks for following!

Jack and Jill 2011

2011-10-31T15:05:00.000-07:00

Looking for more dead trees.

This week we spent some time cutting down wood. It may not seem like it, but that was an exciting prospect to me since it's been a while. On Thursday we spent the entire workday cutting, splitting, and delivering wood. Four guys with four chainsaws causing some mayhem. We only cut down trees that were small and dead. The idea was to get dry wood that would be ready for throwing into the dining hall and chapels. A lot of this cutting was specifically so we'd have wood ready to move for the work weekend.

The wood cutting convoy.

And a great Jack and Jill it was this year! We had about 50 people come up to help us prepare for Winter. I led a crew of sturdy individuals that accomplished a lot of work. Our job was to spread topsoil and then seed two different lawns, and to landscape one of the lake trails with water bars to prevent erosion. I've done a little bit of grass seeding and the water bars, so I was looking forward to these tasks. The grass was rough because the ground was very wet, but we spread out the muddy soil and spread out the grass seed. The water bars are a great project because you have to sweat a little to put them in, but then you can see your work. Plus you can come and see them for years after the installation.

One of the water bars behind the bandshell on the East Side.

We completed those two objectives by the early afternoon and then hustled over to the garage to clean up buses. We managed to clean the inside of all of them as well as the outside of half of them. Not only that, but anyone that wanted to was able to go for a 50 foot bus ride with me driving. I (and everyone at camp) am very thankful for all the work that was done. Some people sat all day and filled tubes with air for the tubing hill. Others mowed for most of the day. I was very thankful for all the people that came out this weekend.

One other side note is that the temps are still dropping. I'm using extra layers in the morning because it's been below 30 on many of them. We even saw a flash of sleet while we were cutting wood. With the cold weather comes frosted windshields. Some people don't like cleaning off those frosted windows. Here's what can happen as a result:

Why we scrape our windshields.

See the stump right between the tire and bumper.

It's worth mentioning that I was not responsible for this truck getting stuck, but I did assist with it's removal from the stump. Most of the burden was carried by the skytrak which simply lifted up the truck. So yeah, don't try to drive with your head out the window on these frosty mornings!

The Pumpkin Potluck

2011-10-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

I think Isaac Haines was the best dressed. Just had to keep people from trying to carve him.

Because of theHolidays in November and December, we had our last staff potluck of 2011 thisweek. After we ate, the main activitywas pumpkin carving. So many of the menran to help with dishes while the young families all grabbed their ownpumpkins. I tried to do dishes as well,but found the dish room too crowded. Eventually Gretchen Ford convinced me to help out with her pumpkin. I enjoyed trying to give her a hard time aboutcutting on the lines, but then she dished it right back when I was havingtrouble. I think that it was a lot offun for everybody.

All the pumpkins. Gretchen is sitting under our pumpkin in a purple shirt.

In other excitingnews, I sent in for a new phone this week and I've already received it. It's kind of weird purchasing new phones witha contract. It feels like I just spent a ton of money, but in reality I've onlymade a commitment to continue paying my bills. So I "purchased" a Microsoft KIN and I also snagged a newphone for my Mom. The KIN had some shakyreviews online, but when Rob was up here a couple weeks ago I was able to getmy hands on his. It looked like it wasexactly what I wanted, so I went for it. I've been getting photos and music onto it and I even figured out how touse WiFi on it. The KIN has a been adefinite upgrade from my last phone which I actually miss a little bit.

In the MaintenanceDepartment we've been finishing up the porch on the East Side Dining Hall andnow we're keeping our eyes peeled for dead trees all over camp. This weekend was the 2nd Men's Retreat andthe last retreat of the Fall season. Every retreat has a special meaning to us and to the folks that come uphere, but maybe because I am a man I enjoy them more than most of theothers. There are moments where they area little too competitive and maybe too demanding, but that is dwarfed by thelife changes as the weekend progresses. I don't always get to see the long term results of listening to TomHarmon while enjoying filling meals and participating in all the campactivities, but I often see flashes. Flashes of lives renewed, men that rekindle that fire for God, and manywho have been sobered when confronted with the reality that they are not wherethey wanted to be in their relationship with God.

All that to say...pray for Camp and the folks that have visited. It's something that I try to remember as time flies by and Winterapproaches. Thanks for following!

Supply Drop

2011-10-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Another week goes by and the weather keeps cooling off. This week I enjoyed seeing a lot of friends com up for the weekend. Rob and Calvin (both former roommates) showed up to help as part time staff and my Dad came with several old friends from Battle Creek. With these friends came quite the supply of breakfast foods and orange juice. I'm very thankful for the provision of all this food.

Just imagine the 6 bottles of OJ.

The colors around camp have dropped off to different shades of brown mixed with the green of the pine trees. With one men's retreat done, we only have one more and our retreat season is over. I'm working on getting involved in town, helping out with the volleyball team for the next couple weeks and then trying to sort out a schedule for running the clock at basketball games this Fall and Winter.

That's a big clump of mushrooms near the bottom.

It's nice to take a stroll around camp and check out the woods. It seems like the woods are restless as the wind shakes the trees. This morning I spent some time at Crosscut to enjoy the view down the hill there. Turkeys have been running all around the property, in fact I almost hit about six of them on the way back from my bus test in Alpena. Oh, and speaking of the bus test! It went very well. Vawn, the lady that administered the test, seemed very impressed with the condition of our bus and with how well prepared I was. I really have to thank Mike Alchin and Danny VanOrman for helping me figure out how to test all the different components of the test.

Wow, I also forgot about my trip to the emergency room. Dave Proper had a bit of a crossbow accident and tore some major flesh off of his thumb. So the same day as the test I drove him down to West Branch to get that stitched up properly. So in one day I drove about 5 hours, took a 2.5 hour test, and sat in a waiting room for about 5 hours. I also found time to clean for about 2 hours in there and waited in line at the Secretary of State for a while. That was a lot of sitting but I was able to do a lot of reading in the ER. Out of it all I was able to drive the bus at the men's retreat this weekend.

You can see where the leaves are going.

So another exciting week. I can hardly remember all the events as it seems to have just blurred by. Thanks for following!

Fall and Summer

2011-10-10T08:42:00.001-07:00

The Iconic Blockhouse

This weekend marked the last Ladies Retreat of 2011. Hundreds of ladies came to Camp to experience the zipline, thunder express, rifle/archery ranges, Shear Lake, and much more. I was happy to see a lot of familiar faces at this retreat, and I hope that the Chapel sessions will have an impact on all of the campers from this weekend. Just by looking around camp we had all the aesthetics of the peak Fall colors, but on top of that we had summer temperatures that combined to make perfect weather for a retreat. But now we move on to the Men's Retreats for two weeks. We'll see sports, hearty meals, and very likely a temperature drop.

On the work days the maintenance crew has been whipping the new roof into shape. We've finished with the skylights and shingled our way up to the peak of the roof in most areas. Now all we need to do is catch up by the chimney and we'll be nearly finished with this roof.

The midweek progress.

The roof at the end of the week.

I have been enjoying this weather and the sports that come with the season. Watching the Tigers in the playoffs has been thrilling, almost too thrilling actually. Then the Lions have been fun to watch along with most the NFL I try to follow on Sunday afternoons. This week I played Volleyball with several of the Ford kids for almost three hours. I've also been watching the leaves fall away from the trees. There's a distinct smell throughout camp as the trees turn, and it's a reminder that Winter will come.

Oh! And my bus test. That's this week at Noon on Thursday. I've practiced many of the skills, but I'm still trying to tighten up my Pre-Trip Inspection. I'll also be driving to Gaylord to get some more hours behind the wheel. I'm hoping it goes well so that I'll be able to help drive bus in the future.

Thanks for Following!

Playing Catch Up

2011-10-03T16:08:00.000-07:00

Playing Catch Up

This was quite the busy week. After Sunday morning (the 25th) breakfast, five of us packed into a Suburban headed for West Virginia. We spent Monday rafting and then we drove back on Tuesday. It's only 10 hours of driving, which is not too bad compared to all of my Michigan Tech trips over the years. The rafting was a lot of fun. We were all soaked, but the water was comfortable. It's very exciting to sit about 3 feet above the water trying to paddle air as the raft crashes down into a huge wave. I'm happy I had the opportunity to make the trip thanks to someone that offered to help me out.

Nice clouds on the trip down.

The largest arch bridge in our hemisphere.

I took some pictures as we traveled around, but video of the rafting had a lot of extra footage of other rafts. I'll try to get that posted as soon as we can edit it down to just our raft. I'm very thankful I could go on the trip, and that our group all made it out safely.

Preparing to tear up the gable on the front of the East Side Dining Hall.

Now the catch up. We all lost a work day for the trip, so there was plenty to do this week. I helped work on putting sheeting on the roof of the East Side Dining Hall. If the weather holds up this coming week we'll be tearing up the gable on the front of the porch and probably ripping off shingles on the last quarter of the roof. I also took a break from that to help Mike Alchin put in a post for a light on the Crosscut stairway.

Half the sheeting is on. Soon we'll be tearing up shingles.

All of that pretty much put off my cleaning, so on Thursday I just cleaned most of the day. The only break from cleaning was so that Jeremy Linsley could have a refresher on zipline training. The training is just to make sure we're all checking for the proper gear at the tower, and then he showed me and Dan Haines how to rescue people in the case of a pulley getting stuck in the middle of the line (which we really don't think will ever happen, but we want to be prepared for it).

I've also been training for a bus test that's coming up in a couple weeks. Thursday the 13th of this month. I feel like I know the information well and that I have the driving skills down. It's just a matter of nailing all the details. It doesn't take much to fail these tests. So please pray towards that as I practice this week and then test on it next week. We only have one more weekend of the ladies, then the men start coming up. Either way I'm looking forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting new folks as I help host three more weekends this Fall.

Thanks for following!

Quick Captions

2011-09-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Just a couple pictures and captions this week. Then I'm headed off to West Virginia for a couple days. I'll tell you all about it next time.

This is the underground tank that we replaced on the East Side.

All the decking is done, and almost all of the rafters.

We're looking forward to laying plywood and roofing soon.

Deck Project

2011-09-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

Tearing out deckboards.

Frost has been greeting us in the mornings up here at camp as we literally tear into the deck on the East Side Dining Hall. As clouds come and go it warms up and cools down at the work site. It's weird to think of the hours of work put into constructing this deck turns into about 10 minutes of me slamming it with a sledgehammer. That worked for the spindles, but the decking was a lot more work. Soon enough we had half of the deck torn apart and we were already installing new posts and new deck boards.

The stripped down deck.

Dan Haines cutting new deck boards.

Most of my pictures on this will be from the same spots, but I think it will be fun to see how the porch starts to form, leading up to roofing the last quarter of the dining hall. Just a stone throw away Mike Alchin has been working on a leaky water tank that feeds the whole East Side of camp. It's buried underground and looks about like an in ground swimming pool. It's been debated a little, but it sounds like the tank was probably installed in the early 70's.

We also spent some time hauling equipment away from Crosscut. Why? Because it was used by campers this weekend! There is still some more work to do, but it is a fully functional lodge at this point. Thank God for the hard work and money that people were willing to sacrifice for this place where God has blessed.

I'm getting used to the Fall schedule, and I really enjoy the Fall weekends. This weekend I helped out by driving the younger boys on the East Side to their chapel on the West Side. I enjoy getting to know the kids a little, and also talking to them out at Thunder Express. As for me, I've been spending most of my time working, but I've also had time to play soccer, watch some movies, and even a little mountain biking. I borrowed the new head mounted camera from camp, and here's a video of a quick ride on the shortcut from the Program Center to the Trailer.

Mike and Cody's Greenhouse

2011-09-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

Wait, greenhouse? Yep, you heard it right. The guys who tear down, chop up, and burn hundreds of trees throughout the year are working on some tree planting. And here's why:

The new stairway to Crosscut is mostly finished. We framed the last landing and now we just have to put up some of the railing and spindles. There is a bit of a bald spot on the side of the hill near the stairway, so we decided to plant some trees. Mike Baker and I traveled around the lake and snagged 14 to start us off on this hill. We tried for a variety, and planted them with some kind of super tree fertilizer pellets. Hopefully most of them will grow to be big fellas. Now Mike is chomping on the bit to plant about 20 more in that area.

So now we wait and water. Sometimes we have 20 minutes to an hour of downtime during the retreats, so it's fun to swing over and give them all a little water. This weekend we didn't have a whole lot of extra time. It was Grandparents Family camp along with work crew. All of that on the West Side.

The work crew was from 5 Points Community Church over near the Pontiac/Auburn Hills/Rochester area. They are a top notch work crew and they showed it this weekend. About 25 teens and leaders helped to do a lot of work in a quick hurry. The big help was about 7 trees near the West Side Ball Field. We hesitated to take them down because we didn't think we could clean it up well enough before a retreat. With all the help from 5 Points we did it all in one day DURING a retreat. I spoke to some campers that were in the RV Park and they were impressed that all of the trees were cleaned up so quickly. The staff also mentioned how hard working the group was, and how their attitude was excellent throughout the hot day.

The grandparents seemed to have an enjoyable camp. The weather was fantastic and the moon was rich and full at night. This camp is fun to see grandparents try to wear out grandkids without getting too tired out themselves. I think everyone sleeps well after running around at camp for a weekend, especially if they come visit me at Thunder Express. I had a couple kids that probably went 10 times in a row. That's a lot of uphill hiking.

Tom Harmon was our speaker this weekend. Several times he mentioned "if time stands, which probably won't be for long". One time he mentioned that he'd still rather "go up with the trumpets" than die on Earth. Well the feast of Trumpets (Deuteronomy 29:1) is coming up at the end of the month and it just reminds me that life could be all done any moment. I'm happy to be spending my time at Camp, living and serving my best.

Another Fall is Here

2011-09-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

The Fall is Here

It's really Fall now. It was so cold that Titus Brown came through the trailer and closed several of my windows on Sunday. I usually just leave them open and cover up with blankets. He says I look like a babooshka wrapped up in my blanket in my chair. I think things will warm up again shortly. Funny to think that on the 1^st it was 90 degrees and I was at a Tigers game.

This weekend we had a Family Camp. It's interesting to watch the different families that come up here year after year. I've been able to spend time with the some of the kids at all 4 of the family camps. One of them is named Cody actually. I was able to talk to him this weekend, and he spent a lot of time on the blob while I was lifeguarding. I also spent some time on the Zipline and several trips through the dish room.

The weather was the peculiar aspect of the weekend to me. I think that we bounced from high 80's to low 60's as the weekend rolled on. The crisp air makes me want to run out and play some football. Instead, I'll probably spend the day unpacking my things, and really moving into the trailer. So far I have my stuff in the building, but I need to get it all unloaded and put right where I want it.

As for the maintenance department, we have a busy Fall planned out. So far there has been a lot of getting ready for Fall camps. That means tidying up the buildings and preparing the grounds for visitors. For me that meant moving the Handcrafts tables from the East Side to the RV Park and cleaning up the cookout and campout sites in the national forest. The big project for the maintenance group has been a giant stairway for the Crosscut parking lot. I've been able to help on it here and there, but not very much. I'll be able to work on the finishing touches this week.

Please pray for the work that is coming this season!

Summer Wrap Up

2011-08-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple things from the summer. Just to catch us up before the Fall blogging season really begins.

This was very early in the summer. The turtles were out and about, and Rob is always looking for animals to pick up. All those turtles led to a classic Lee Brown story. Lee Brown directs the program department here at camp, and he's somewhat of a nature guru. He told us that you can tell a male turtle because he has big claws. Apparently he uses those to brush against the face of females and melt their hearts. It's classic Lee Brown. I could tell more stories about Lee, but they are much better coming straight from him.

During the summer we clean all morning after the campers leave. Once cleaning is done we have the rest of the day off usually. I enjoyed stuffing soccer games into that time, but after that everyone wants a good dip in the lake. Since I'm still certified to lifeguard, I was able to open the lake up on many of the afternoons. One of those times a couple of the swimmers wanted to kayak to the other side and swim for a bit. So I tossed a life tube in a canoe and went across the lake with them. Made for a mobile life guarding station for a little while.

This isn't the best picture, but I think it gets the point across. I helped out witht the maintenance issues on the West Side. That usually meant plunging toilets in the ladies bathrooms. The funny thing is that they usually had plunged it well enough, and they just needed to give it another flush to try it. On the other hand there were a couple terrible messes that I had to call in back up for. Otherwise there were light bulbs I'd mess with, and a couple of non-critical things that I left for the real maintenance guys.

The zip line was my second home this summer. Actually my third home. My first was the West Side Dining hall, the second was my bedroom, and finally the zipline. The last week we had a couple of thunderstorms roll through, delaying some of the zipline times. Since the tower has no roof I hunkered down under my umbrella while waiting for new groups to come up.

All in all the zipline was fun to work. It's neat to get to see all the campers at some point, and it's an important part of safety at camp. I thank God for the vigilance and the endurance to keep running the zipline on the super hot afternoons. Also for the patience to deal with Thunder delays with a positive attitude.

So I'm happy the summer is over. It pushes you to the limit to work so hard and just keep going. I'm also sad to see the summer staff go. I njoy meeting all these folks who come out to help. Hopefully many of them will return for retreats as part time staff or as campers. Thank God for the ministry He lets us be a part of at camp.

Wind Sprints

2011-07-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

This summer sure feels like Wind Sprints. I'll try to lay down some of my schedule along with some pictures. We'll see how much I can type in about 10 30 45 minutes.

Tuesday
Most of my days are really fast. Tuesday morning is not. After winding down on Monday I usually get breakfast early, then spend some time on preparing for the week. That can mean modifying ambushes for odd tribe numbers, or possibly just printing out some of the paperwork I need throughout the week.

We bring in the campers at about 2:30pm. I run announcements in the Dining Hall while they all grab a cookie and milk. Then I send them out to get split into tribes by Jon Ford. Rob and I look around to make sure nothing is coming up with the counselors as they are sorting through some paperwork. By 4:00pm we try to ring the bell for our opener.

The Opener establishes some major Camp Barakel rules and alarms to pay attention to. Then we turn them loose with their counselors. After dinner Rob and I run a dual ambush with guys and girls playing different ambushes. I try to go to most of the chapels, at least to check in and see how they're going, otherwise I get paperwork and reading done before counselor snack. I also try to help out at counselor snack until about 11pm.

Wednesday-Saturday
I usually get to the Program Center before 8am to make sure all my ducks are in a row for the day. Then after breakfast I help run the Counselor Circles. On the West Side of camp we have one for girls, then another later for boys. It's a chance for the counselors to regroup mentally while they're campers are in morning chapel.

I almost exclusively run lunch announcements and the Big Splash afterwards. Big Splash is where we pick two tables and each of them sends a representative to challenge another camper or staff person. Then we go outside and they each have to kneel in front a bucket, only one of them has water in it. So it's a challenge where you have a 50/50 chance of getting soaked.

Most afternoons I have Zipline for all of freetime. It's a fun break from the thinking aspect of programing. You just operate the zipline, pretty simple. Saturday afternoons I have a break from the Zipline and I usually get pulled for Lifeguarding, or else I just go down to the water to swim with the kids.

After freetime we have dinner, ambush, chapel, counselor snack. This is my daily grind for the most part. I have a lot of responsibilities throughout the day, but there are often 15-45 minutes slots where I'm between tasks. I try to use these times to be a presense around camp, but I also get in a lot of reading. It's just enough time to take a break, but hard to do much beyond that.

(I know this is super big but I thought it looked sweet. Rob has a fun panorama camera)
Sunday
On Sunday I get up early for breakfast announcements, and then I send the tribes off to the East Side for Chapel. After that I become the inspector, checking out to see how well the 4th-6th grade kids can clean up. I'm suprised at how good they clean one week, then the next week there'll be a couple of tribes that completely blow it. I get to rush over to chapel late, then rush back over for lunch on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday afternoon is funny. Everything is kind of chill around here because games are over, free time is over, but there is still a lot of programing work to do. So I spend most of the afternoon adding up Merit scores, Sports scores, and also running the famous tradition of Counselor Hunt. Through all that I try to watch Musicale and eventually get some food before my Big Big Splash and the Awards. It's mostly downhill from there. We only have Firebowl and Counselor Snack after the Awards.

Monday
I usually need to be at the Medicine Teepee at 6:45am to get the leftover meds that we'll pack up for the kids. Sometimes Rob does this for me to help me get a little sleep. It's very much appreciated when he does. So I return the meds, hand out camper release forms, then after saying goodbye when the buses leave I get to watch the last kids before they get picked up.

That's Day 1 of Monday. Day 2 is cleaning. It really does feel like a whole day, although it's just 8:45am-11:00am. I run the Heritage cleaning crew, which is kind of a joke because I have two THREE year returners that help clean. They let me vacuum and I get some much needed alone time with a lot of noise in my ears.

Day 3 is the afternoon where we have free time. Sometimes there are organized events or training sessions, but usually we find some way to chill out for about 8 hours. The iron man summer staff used to welcome the buses back that same day. We're super thankful for the rest.

So that's the summer for me. I do have time to chill here and there, but most of the day is spent on the go. I'm having a lot of fun, and I still get to spend quality time with Mike Baker. I helped shingle for a morning, and installed a window into Dave Douglas' house one morning.

If anyone is still following I thank you for that. Please keep praying for me as I try to sprint my way through the summer here at Camp Barakel.

Summer Workshop

2011-06-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

Summer has started here at Camp Barakel. We haven't seen any campers, but the two weeks of training are important for our summer staff. During this time they accomplish a lot of different things. New people are getting used to camp, and learning about the daily schedule. Otherwise there are several roles, and each one has a slightly unique workshop experience.

Counselors- prepare for their tribe talks. These are short little Sunday school type segments of the day early in the morning, and right before bed. Campers usually focus on memorizing our summer verses (Romans 12:9-12) in the morning, then they have a review of the evening chapel service at night. Each counselor has the latitude to change some aspects of their tribe talks, but they follow that general framework. Counselors also have a lot of training in how to deal with campers. Each camper has a different experience and we try to get our counselors ready to deal with any situation they might run into.

YAPS (Young Adult Program Staff)- Many of these folks are fresh out of high school. They have a wide variety of tasks we ask them to do, flexibility being key. YAPS can be lifeguards, piano players, archery/riflery instructors, cook assistants, laundry workers, handcraft guides, and trading post workers. Throughout all of those tasks they help us run the ambush games and pretty much any other program activity at camp sees a YAP cleaning it, preparing it, or running it. On top of all that they are often asked to counsel for a week when we have full camps.

Programers- This is me this year. We have an interesting job. We need to develop relationships with all the summer staff because we depend on all of them to make our program work. At the same time we have a mountain of preparation. Programers spend a lot of time planning ambushes and getting the supplies ready. While doing that, we have a surprising amount of paperwork to attend to. Every week we have to print out counselor schedules, game schedules, detail sheets (that help counselors remember the daily details), and announcements among other tasks. This week we also have to design and print out a lot of one time papers like the bulletin board paperwork and rules sheets.

Programing has been a tough balance for me, but I'm enjoying the fast pace so far. It's also hard because it doesn't feels like our work adds up to much yet. Others are powering through training sessions while we disappear, but it's all important work for running camp. I think it's one of those things that I'll feel a monkey on my back until we get through a full week, then I'll feel more confident in our work. For now we just have to keep our nose to the grindstone and work. It really is to the glory of God.

STEP Counselors- The Summer Tech and Engineer Program counselor have their work cut out for them. They'll be working with high schoolers that come to work on dishes and other hard work around camp. They're job ends up covering all the other jobs in different ways, and more. So this week they have been learning how to run the dish room, preparing their own program activities, and getting used to a different schedule. It's really a wide variety, yet the focus has to remain on the one on one relationships they make with their engineers/techs.

So that's the main four. There are some other summer leaders that are vital to how camp runs, but they have a much different schedule and I honestly don't know the details. It's hard work all around, but they do make us get our sleep in for now. I have a feeling they're pulling the plug on that as the summer goes on and our schedule gets crunched. Pray for us! We're thinking about campers and God. Trying to put the two together.

Here are a couple pictures from family night at the Ford's! Don't know if the video will work.

Thanks for following my erratic schedule!

Jumping to Summer

2011-05-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

Summer is starting to happen all around us. Saturday was the first super hot work day. I think the first one always catches us off guard here at camp. We get used to the cold in the Winter, everyone has their own methods of coping with the cold. Well now we start to get used to the hot heat. The good news is that the gnats haven't moved in quite yet, although the mosquito's are taking advantage of the open space while they can.

We've been hard at work to finish off a lot of projects at camp this week. It becomes a juggling act between cleaning assignments, major projects, and minor projects. All of them are important, so it's important that we get done everything we can. I'm happy to say the Staff Room in the East Side Dining Hall is finished. A lot of hands were able to get in on that, and I think it looks really nice now. I should say we're finished for our part, there is a cabinet that we've ordered and we'll install when we receive it.

The Bath House continues progressing. The boy's side is just waiting on the fixtures for the showers. Someone offered to fabricate some very nice metal boxes that cover the pipes and will give the showers a smooth, finished appearance. Over on the girl's side we're lagging behind where I'd like to be. Some of the glass board is up, but it takes a long time to finish some of the smaller sections around the edges. Unfortunately we won't finish before the Memorial Day family camp, but it should be finished before summer camp begins. We're doing what we can to make the shower sections available for the campers this coming weekend.

Crosscut continues to look more and more like a finished building. I spent a morning last week knocking down trees to open up some room to expand the parking lot behind Heritage Lodge. It was a lot of fun to just knock the trees down, then push them to the side. Jerry is a man who comes up for a week at this time of year and he is truly a work horse. We we're able to take out about 7 major trees and clean it all up so people could come and go to Crosscut. I haven't been working too much inside the building lately, but I think we're sitting on go for carpeting and bunk beds. After that a lot of the work is just finishing up the details. I think the goal at this point is to get it open for campers sometime this summer.

We just had a Men's Retreat on the West Side and a Mother/Daughter Retreat on the East Side. My dad came up with the men and the Hulderman's (friends from my childhood) came up with the girls on the East Side. I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of camp, especially with so many familiar faces coming up. Calvin and Megan Bradley were here to help out as well. As summer approaches we continue to tighten everything up to prepare for the arrival of our summer staff, and eventually for our campers.

This summer I'll be programing on the West Side with Jon Ford and Rob McAdams. This means I'll be helping Jon and Rob in organizing the activities on the West Side with mostly Junior Campers (Grades 3-6). I don't know all the details and in and outs of my daily life as a programer, but I know I'll be working closely between the campers, the counselors, and the other programers. The schedule is hardy for a programer, consisting of late nights trying to hammer out details for the week and to keep things running smoothly. Please pray for me as the summer begins. Pray that I'd keep a good attitude in stressful situations, and that I'd have the energy to keep working hard throughout the summer.

Another note on the same train of thought. With the way the summer goes so quickly I'm not sure how consistent the blogging will be over the summer. I enjoy getting out some pictures and information on what I'm working on here, but the schedule may take away from the blog. Thanks for following, and please be patient with me over the next 3 months.

Coming and Going

2011-05-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

This was a super busy week. I'll try to break it down by day, but it's hard to remember all the details even then.

Monday- I kept the score book for Fairview's baseball game against Posen. Posen is forever away and the game ended with a disappointing 7 run rally by Posen in the bottom of the 6th. With 2 outs Luke Harris actually struck out 3 in a row, but because the ball got away on the 3rd strike each time, the runners all advanced. I still enjoy keeping the book and getting to know the guys on the team.

Tuesday- A full day spent working on the girls side of the Bath House. We did a lot of the framing, but ended up leaving for the day with more to do. The boys side is very near completion, so we're hoping to wrap it up in this building soon.

Wednesday- First day of zipline training. We had some visitors from downstate including Brad Smith and Stephen Sovis to join in the training. It went a lot faster than last year, which was good. It's fun to get a couple zips in, and to refresh on the procedures of sending people down the lines. We had enough time that afternoon to do some work too, so I did some work for the roof on the East Side Dining Hall.

When it rains really hard we get water running from the shingles and it actually wraps around the outside of the building and sprays onto the porch. So Mike Baker showed me how to make some metal strips that take the water another couple inches from the siding, preventing the spray onto the porch. Here are some pictures of the ancient looking equipment we use to bend and cut the metal.

We have a wide variety of aluminum. We were hoping to use a brown color, but all we had was the plain aluminum.

This is the cutter. You place the metal at the appropriate length to cut it, then step on the petal down below.

This is the bender. It takes your cut piece, pinches it in place for half of it, then bends it with the other half.

This is an actual 3 foot strip that will be put under the bottom edge of the shingles. Because it is so silver it stands out a little more than we would have liked. The important thing is it works to push the water just far enough from the porch so that it doesn't work its way back into the building.

Thursday- Second day of zipline training. Several of us scored 100% and I was able to join that club this year, and the skills test was a breeze. I hustled back to Battle Creek right after the training finished. Since we were released from training so early I was able to see Mrs. Lindow (a high school teacher from the Math and Science Center) and go out to eat with my Mom at Finleys. After getting stuffed there I watched the Red Wings lose their game 7... and that's all I have to say about that.

Friday- The 10th Annual Water Festival! I've helped with this since it's inception in 2002 when I was a junior in high school. We end up with about 70 volunteers to organize almost 1000 kids throughout the morning. Each class goes through 2 classes that teach them about water. How they affect it, how they can protect it, and how we can clean up after ourselves. Then each class goes to Billy B, a singer who helps the kids loosen up while singing them songs he's adapted for learning about water. One example is "Here come the flies in black" which is adapted from the Men in Black song by Will Smith (which he adapted from something else). The song teaches about Blackfly's and how their presence indicates the health of a natural water system.

Right after the Water Festival I hustled right back to camp. I spent that night playing some frisbee, swimming, watching movies, roasting marshmallows, and playing Monopoly Deal in that order. It's an indication of how busy this week was that I can list off that many things and I feel I don't have room to go into details. It was definitely a lot of fun that night, and neat to spend time with all the guests we had up for the night.

Saturday- The second Co-Labor Challenge. Following up on the water theme my crew was tasked with dealing with the soil erosion water is causing on some of our steep paths. We had 3 sites, and my crew worked like scalded dogs to fix every one of them up. The general idea was to place 12-13 foot sections of telephone at an angle to the path. We dig a trench for the pole, but leave much of it sticking out so the water hits it, then runs away from the path.

So if you imagine the water running straight down the hill (away from us) in the first picture, the water bar carries it away to the right. Then the water momentum is broken up by the large rocks at the end of the pole as you can see at the top of the second picture. We placed 6 poles in at Thunder Express, then covered the path with gravel.

We did the same thing on the path from the West Side Dining Hall to the Waterfront, and at the Bandshell on the East Side. Except for the telephone poles. Since we didn't have any we just filled in the paths, and tried to get some of the larger rocks in strategic locations to help prevent washouts.

Sunday- Sunday actually starts on Saturday. Right after work I jumped in the car with the Harris' and we headed down to Detroit. We met up with more of their family and stayed in a condo in downtown Detroit. The plan was to check out town, eat in Greektown, then watch a Tigers game. Relentless rain changed our plans as we were eating at "The Pegasus" and we saw the game was cancelled. So we traded that out for a trip on the Detroit People Mover and then a visit to Great Lakes Crossings on the way back up to camp.

Great Lakes Crossings is what they call an "outlet mall". I would have thought that means they have relatively cheap things because they skip going to a retailer like Target or Kohls. What it means is that they multiply the prices by about 10, then cut them by half. So you see a suit jacket that's marked down to $500 from $1000. Either way it leads to me not buying anything, and spending some quality time with Randy on the various seats and benches scattered throughout the main hall.

So that was the week. We arrived back at camp at a decent hour and I changed the oil in my car with Luke Harris. Because of the HUGE generosity of the Harris' I didn't spend any money on the Detroit part of the trip. I did have to put 2 tanks of gas in my car, but I felt it was worth supporting the Water Festival and seeing Battle Creek for one last time before summer.

So here we go. A couple retreats, then Workshop!

Co Labor Challenge 1

2011-05-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

This week was the first of two Co Labor challenges. It's similar to the Jack and Jill weekend we had last year in October. This time we invite work groups from all over our region to come up and work for about 6 hours. They spend the night Friday night, then we provide them with meals on Saturday before sending them off after some free time and dinner Saturday evening. My crew was from Northville and we were part of a large group that raked the West Side. The four crews that were on the West Side did some leapfrogging as we worked all the way across the West Side. Other crews set toilets in Crosscut Lodge, spread wood chips on both sides of camp, and tore down the ceiling of the girls side of the Bath House.

It's amazing to see the work that we're able to accomplish in such a short time. At 3:15pm we have some free time. I spent my time life guarding at the water front where I had about 17 swimmers brave the cold water. Several others enjoyed kayaks on the sunny day.

As for the regular work week, we finished up the boys side of the Bath House except for cleaning and some odds and ends. I'll be working with Mike Baker and Mike Alchin on tackling some of the girls side this week. In the meantime Dan Haines dominated some more tile in the East Side Dining Hall Staff Room. That project is nearing completion as we just have to lay carpet and wallpaper.

It's a joy to work as the weather warms up and our schedule continues to be full of important projects around camp. I'll be trying to meet with Jon Ford this week to discuss my role for the summer. Please pray for the summer, and our ministry to the kids that will come up throughout the next 3 months. I'm also getting tighter on money. God has been good over this straight 17 months of work at Camp Barakel, and I'm praying that He would continue to provide as I try to make it a full 2 years.

Thanks for following!

Reading Update

2011-05-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

We dedicated Crosscut this week and finished up the boys side of the Bath House. It was neat to see things progressing along, but we have a lot more work to do too. We've seen what God can do with these buildings and we're praying that He'll be glorified by Crosscut and the work that counselors will do in it. Now my reading review. If you're not interested in the books I've been reading you probably won't care too much about the rest of this week's post.

So back in October I had written up a 6 month reading plan including Peter Pan, Bonhoeffer, The Civil War, and The Chronicles of Narnia.. Since 6 months has gone by I figured I'd update on what I've been reading.

The Great Divorce by CS Lewis: Lewis brings us to a world where people are given a chance to surrender to God after they've died. While this isn't a Biblical viewpoint, I believe he's just using this scenario as a medium to explore different types of people. Along the way we meet several individuals that have put up blinders to God. One guy has chosen to twist scriptures to create his own theology, much like Rob Bell. A woman claims to love her family, and wants access to Heaven to meet up with them. In reality she is twisting this love to gratify her selfish desires. Some people choose to give up their earthly sins to accept the true freedom God offers. I'd say the main point is that we don't go to Heaven because we want to see people there or get something out of it, but because we give up ourselves and then God will give us all we need and more.

Crazy Love by Francis Chan: This book uses a lot of scripture to encourage believers to give up the worldly things we are chasing after in order to follow God's purpose in our lives. Crazy Love focuses on giving up monetary things, and choosing to go against the flow of the world. Where the world is going is not where Christians should be going, and going against the flow will seem crazy, but I can personally attest to the fact that God provides if we depend on Him.

Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes: I had heard that this book was great, but was a little disappointed in some things. The writer takes on a worshipful attitude towards Bonhoeffer. In fact you can't find anything negative about the guy at any point in the book. More disappointing to me was that it reveals how little Bonhoeffer did in the effort to assassinate Adolf Hitler. I was under the impression that he was pivotal and very involved. Instead it appears more like he was born into a position where he could be involved in these high circles and his Theological education made him the "moral compass" of the assassination group. The positive was that this book gives a good perspective of the state of the German Church and government on the eve of World War II. Just compare that to the state of our government and church and it's fairly alarming.

Peter Barrie by JM Berrie: Great book that I'd read before. I love the spirit of the "forever child" that Berrie captures. I feel a kinship to Peter Pan in a lot of ways and I also see him in many of the little boys around camp. When Wendy helps Peter attach his shadow he says "How clever am I!", clearly upsetting Wendy. I've actually helped little kids that will then turn and say "look what I did". That's just one example of how the mind of a child works, and how Berrie nails it in this book.

Til We Have Faces by CS Lewis: This is a mixup of the old myth about Cupid and Psyche. CS Lewis uses it as a picture of a girl who loves her sister so much it's unhealthy for everyone involved. It's not quite the normal Greek tragedy, but it does have some elements of it in there. I enjoyed the retelling of this myth, although it's probably low on my list of CS Lewis favorites.

Ender's Game and the Ender's Shadow Series by Orson Scott Card: I won't say too much about these 5 books. They're set in a future where aliens are attacking Earth and the world bands together to defeat the threat. Afterwards the world reverts back to fighting and conquering each other. It focuses in on a genetically altered kid who becomes a great general and helps to unite the world. I love these books, although the first couple are in a different class of awesome. They all explore leadership, especially among children. I find that Card reveals things about how children think that are practical in training them to excellence.

Forgotten God by Francis Chan: My first thought here was I couldn't remember what it was about. So that kind of shows it wasn't a highlight on my book tour. I remember after thinking about it that it's about the Holy Spirit and it's role in our lives. Chan suggests we strip the Holy Spirit out of the trinity by mostly ignoring it. I know I generally agreed with this book while disagreeing with several points.

Way of Wisdom by MacDonald: This was a frustrating book to me. I agree with most of MacDonald's views on God. I didn't like how he seemed to be writing to a different audience than me. He focused on people that think once they mess up and choose a different path they are messed up forever and can't get back on that path. I'm not really one of those people so his redundant mention of getting on "the dot" that is God's will was annoying. I agree with his conclusions that there are different types of God's will and we need to do what we can to place ourselves under God's authority in the decisions we make.

American Creation by Ellis: A nice breakdown of several key moments in early American history. He includes the Declaration of Independence, Valley Forge, and our treatment of Indians and slaves. Ellis refuses to acknowledge that ANY of the founding fathers had a Christian perspective. I agree that we've exaggerated their relationships with God, especially because most of it we can't know from our perspective, but there are a lot of disagreements I noted in the margins of this book. He blames the founding fathers for not addressing slavery and Indians properly, then goes back and claims they couldn't really do much about it. One chapter is about the breakdown of our democracy into a two party system. This frustrates me to watch Thomas Jefferson turn on George Washington and John Adams, but that is history and I guess I should accept it.

Radical by David Platt: I'm not finished with this yet. So far he's focusing on world missions. I don't like how he attaches salvation to global outreach, but he still has a lot of book to bring it together. We'll see how I like it eventually.

So you see I didn't get to The Civil War or The Chronicles of Narnia, but I did get a lot done. 13 books in 6 months. If you consider Bonhoeffer took 2 months then it's 12 boks in 4 months. The shortest book was "Shadow Puppets" that I tore through in about 3 days. In fact I really read the whole "Shadow Series" by Orson Scott Card really quickly. I'll be reading a lot over the next months, although it'll probably slow up as the summer progresses.

Hopefully that wasn't too boring, let me know if you have any questions or comments about these books, I enjoy talking about them.

Winter Needs to Back Off

2011-04-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

Now that we've been working on the Bath House on the West Side for a couple weeks we're doing less demolition inside and more cutting outside. The problem with that is when we get 8 inches of snow overnight. Takes away some of the comfort and space I like when I'm ripping down a long piece of glass board. Another frustrating thing is that we have to rip down the glass board into thin slices. The Bath House had a lot of exposed pipes that we've boxed in with glass board. It's great that we've enclosed them because they were smoking hot heating pipes, but it's really hard to install glass board on this tiny little box. So all that to say that we didn't make much visual progress on the project, but it's still hard stuff that needs to be completed. Now we're ready for the next section, and usually these keep going faster and faster as we get more experience with them.

So after we cleaned up a lot of wet, heavy snow our main focus shifted back to the Bath House. Dan Haines continues to work hard on the tile in Crosscut. I think he can see the light at the end of the tunnel for his tile work down there. He still has to work on a little bit of tile in the Bath House and more in the East Side Dining Hall Staff Room. Oh... and then there is the rest of the stone for the outside of Crosscut. Well that's all part of our plan to keep him working tiling/masonry for a solid year of camp. Just kidding. But seriously, we'll see if he gets to work on something else.

This weekend I headed home for an Alumni swim meet at Battle Creek Central's new pool. I really enjoyed seeing a lot of familiar faces and catching up with people from high school. Without training I still swim about what I did in high school, but I may try to work out a little for the next alumni meet on Thanksgiving weekend. In the meantime it was just fun to see the graduates from the 80's and the 90's smoke everyone else.

So here's hoping we don't get anymore snow. Especially on a weekend of raking like last year. Thanks for following.

A Messy Project

2011-04-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

The West side bath house is one of the original buildings on camp. It's been worked on many times over the last 60 years, but the writing is on the wall for the building. But not yet. With Crosscut Lodge on the precipice of completions, this summer could be the first summer that campers don't use the bath house. It's still the most accessible restroom facility on the West side, located very close to the West Side Dining Hall. So now we've been working to replace the most dilapidated aspect, the ceiling.

You can see what the inside of the bath house looks like, and the state of the ceiling in these pictures. Mike Baker spent last week tearing down the ceilings, mostly by himself. After we used the tube to take care of the insulation nicely, Mike just started ripping the ceiling down and cleaning it up from there. It sounded absolutely miserable. So it made quite a mess, but left us with a better idea of what we had to work with. As you can see in the pictures below, the ceiling joists were about four feet apart, so Mike decided to put new joists in with two foot spacing. You can also see the swimming goggles Mike tried to use at some points to keep the dust out of his face.

Now we have new ceiling joists, and supports that will help bear snow weight over the Winter. After the joists were complete in that section, Mike Alchin put in some rolled insulation and we started in with the glassboard that will sharpen up this ceiling. After getting one piece in, we were out of time for the weekend. Then Mike Baker went in on Saturday and just plugged away at it with the help of whoever happened to stop by. So now the room is almost finished.

So we'll be working on this for the next couple weeks. In the meantime Dan Haines is still plowing through tile down in Crosscut. Since September Dan Haines has spent his whole time at Barakel mixing mortar for hanging stone and laying tiles. We try to visit him periodically, and he's progressing very steadily. We're all very glad to have someone who can do such a fantastic job.

You can even see Randy trying to encourage Dan for his good work. So we're really hustling on projects to improve camp over this Spring season. Soon we'll see campers and workers returning, just the way it should be.

Spring Break in Minivans

2011-04-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

This week was Spring Break for a lot of the Michigan Public schools. Since camp workers tend to use this time to go on vacation, I decided to take the time off to spend some time at home. Like usual time at home turned into time on the road. 18 hours in fact, and most of it in a couple different minivans. Here's a breakdown of my time at home:

Monday/Tuesday- Catching up with some friends. Catching up on some tv (the Office mostly) and On Demand movies.

Wednesday- Spent the morning driving with Tim Wygant, our Youth Pastor, to visit Rob for lunch in Chicago. He gave us a quick tour around campus and showed us "Go Roma", a nice pizza shop with a crazy drink center that makes whatever drink you want using a touchscreen. After lunch we met up with the Ford family from Camp Barakel and brought Samuel and Isaiah on the El Train and then the Subway. They said the Subway smelled bad.

After the public transportation adventures we headed over to the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. It's a neat museum that holds many special treasures from the Persian Empire and beyond. Rob, Tim, and I enjoyed looking at these artifacts that Daniel used to walk by everyday on the way into the King's Throne Room. There was a lot of information to take in, then we pretty much headed right out of town after that.

Thursday- Trip to South Haven with the Youth Group. It was still cold outside but we still enjoyed a meal at Captain Nemo's and some cards on the beach. The highlight of the trip was honestly some crazy kids who were doing donuts in the parking lot. There were four cars that were driving me nuts with their shenanigans. One of them was trying to power slide out of the drive way and slammed into a sand dune. He hit it so hard he bounced up onto two wheels for a moment. The crew gathered up, picked up the pieces, and then hustled out of there before the cops showed up. In the end we couldn't even watch the sunset because the clouds were too thick.

Friday- Normal day with some time at Pizza Sam's.

Saturday/Sunday- Trip with Dad to Chagrin Falls (Cleveland Area), Ohio. We visited some of his old motorcycle friends (the Stoners) on Saturday, then visited Parkside Church on Sunday morning. I've been a long time fan of Alistair Begg, so it was a lot of fun to visit and see him speak in person. I also met Matt McAlvey who is both Barakel and Battle Creek Central Alumni.

After returning from Ohio Sunday evening I was able to get in a couple hours of Tennis with my friend Grant Penrod, and then a bunch of Monopoly Deal at Tim's house. The weather was plain shocking to me on Sunday. Every time I walked outdoors I expected to feel a cold blast, but was greeted with warm winds.

It was a great week of catching up. I always like seeing Battle Creek. I'm sad to see it deteriorating slowly, but it's the way of the world. We're all sort of falling apart in this worldly state we're in. Amongst the troubles of the world it's fun to slow down and walk through history with some friends.

Projects

2011-04-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

After finishing up the cleaning on the East Side this week, we've been able to attack the staff room of the East Side Dining Hall. The carpet is all out and we've placed cement board under the main walkway in preparation for tile that will cover that section. We've also tied up some loose ends around camp including the Hillbilly Porch. It's a fun little porch that we used to greet the campers on the West Side this Winter. It's kind of rickety, so picking it up can be quite a challenge. Like usual, Mike used his Skytrak wizardry to move it back into the maintenance yard fairly quickly.

Another project was justed started on Friday too. The Bath House on the West Side needs a lot of improvements, and we are working on the ceilings. Our first step in replacing them is to get all the insulation out. Well Mike Baker went up there to cut a hole in the ceiling and start dumping it through. Since there are no lights up in the attic, Mike had to take a headlamp and a dust mask to try to deal with the enclosed space. Once there, he found three layers of insulations. It's not a joke, we've been dealing with styrofoam, rolled, and blown insulation. To help get it all out of the attic with a minimal mess, Mike brought a caterpillar play tube from his house. So while he slaved in the attic I just swapped out trash cans at the bottom of the tube and carried them out to the truck.

Now I'm home for Spring Break. I spent Saturday playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament with my good friend from college, Evan Winer. Our team was a mash up of experienced players and we didn't play really well together, but I think everyone had a lot of fun. Usually after spending time in Grand Rapids I enjoy an early morning ride through the country. I don't know if it brings me back to my childhood in East Leroy or if it reminds me of my Grandpa's house near Duck Lake, but I've always enjoyed the rising sun as I cruise towards Battle Creek.

Return of Winter

2011-03-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Just when the snow was retreating, we've had a wintry setback. 12 inches of a setback. I had been taking pictures to show how close we were to being able to play some of the outdoor sports, but then all of camp was transformed overnight. It's a bit of a setback after thinking Spring was going to get a running start this year.

Snow or no snow we went on with some Spring cleaning. Cleaning week at Camp Barakel is a week where the whole staff splits up and spends most of three days cleaning an assigned area. My area was Heritage and we were able to fly through it in two days. We start on the ceilings and work our way down through the lights, bunks, bathrooms, and carpets. I enjoy cleaning the high stuff cause I get to use a ladder, and most other people don't seem to enjoy it so much. Here are some pictures from that view.

When we weren't cleaning (Monday, Friday, then 3-5pm Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) I was painting the staff room of the East Side Dining Hall. Last week I mentioned scraping the ceiling with the guys. Well this week I primed and painted the whole ceiling with help from Titus. Then Mike Baker and Mike Alchin joined us to rip up the carpet and take out some of the tiles. It's nice to make a whole lot of progress with the help of the other guys.

Later!

Work and Run

2011-03-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

Things are still settling in for the off season. This has been a lot different than last year. Mike Baker had surgery and is supposed to take it easy for the next couple weeks and Dan Haines just welcomed another son. That left us short of guys right when we're trying to ramp up projects. So I spent some time with Dan starting the tile for the Great Room in Crosscut. Each piece of tile is about a 20 inch square. It's been really hard to get the tiles level, but Dan does most of that while I keep the mortar ready and help him out along the way.

We are also doing some remodeling work in the East Side Dining Hall Staff Room. Over the summer we had a rainstorm that worked it's way through the ceiling, causing a fair amount of damage. Now we are putting in some new tile, moving some cabinets around, and refinishing the drywall. In order to prepare the room for the drywall guys, Mike Alchin has been tearing down wallpaper and replacing damaged drywall. While doing that he realized we needed to smooth out the textured ceiling, and he recruited a couple of us to scrape at the ceiling. It was a fairly grueling bit of work, but the three of us made light work of it.

That was the gist of the work for the week. I ended up making a run home again. I stopped in Rochester and spent some time with Barakel friends from that area. Then I hustled home on Saturday afternoon, just in time for the Taco Uno party at my church. I took one quick picture, then realized that it doesn't have tacos or Uno cards in it. That's all right though. I think. You can still see that we were gathered at tables talking at least.

Now I'm posting this while sitting in the narthex of the church. I'm about to drive back up to camp, picking Sam Doyle up on the way. I hope your March Madness brackets are doing better than mine is. Oh, and if you don't have one, then you are blessed beyond the rest of us.

Thanks for reading!

A Different Week

2011-03-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

After ten weeks of camp we now transfer back into the off season routine. Out of the five guys in the maintenance crew, two were gone for the week, leaving us with a little bit of a different week. The bathroom partitions in Crosscut are all finished up now and we have started updating the staff room in the East Side Dining Hall. We also took out the bathroom counters from Snowshoe lodge. They have had some kind of white splash stains on them for quite a while, we finally have some time to take them out and get them refinished before campers return in May.

This being the first open weekend of the year, I rushed home on Friday afternoon. It was a good chance to catch up with people at home. I ate at Pizza Sam's a couple of times and even attended follies at the Calhoun Christian School on Friday night. I also used the opportunity to buy some supplies. It's funny what a little orange juice, some cereal, parmesan cheese, and a box of candy bars will do for me. Most of it will last through this Spring season at camp.

The three boxes of Poptarts from Big Lots are not pictured above. Garrison Hills is always central to my trips home. I try to catch up with a lot of people, especially the Youth Pastor from my church. I end up seeing him at Pizza Sam's a couple times, but I almost always get to go to church on Sunday mornings. I don't get to catch up with everyone as much as I'd like, but it's just nice to see faces again after two and half months.

There's good old Garrison Hills. Rob was also home on Spring Break, and I was happy to see him for a little bit. Hopefully I'll get to come and go in Battle Creek a couple more times over the next months.

Wrapping Up Winter

2011-03-07T19:32:00.000-08:00

For our last weekend of Winter camping I don't think anyone knew how the tubing hill or cross country skiing would go. We didn't have much snow left to move around camp, so we just waited it out. Friday afternoon we had rain which led to great tubing runs Friday night. They were fast, and you could go to the end of the run and all the way back down. Then overnight we accumulated about 4 inches that stuck to all the icy trees and roads. It was enough to even open the cross country ski trails for the first time in 3 weekends.

We only used the West side of camp, but it was pretty full with two different retreats at once. Meals were staggered on Saturday, which made them fairly long for doing dishes, but it was at a leisurely pace that's nice at this time of year. I was able to play broomball with a team from Kalamazoo. I don't know why they let me join them, cause they were already really good. It was a blast to play some extra broomball, and a nice way to top off the season.

On Sunday afternoon I went out cross country skiing for the first time this year. I don't know why I didn't get to it earlier, but I couldn't resist all the pine trees heavily laden with snow. It just made me think of the song "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin. Here are the pictures, guest starring Titus Brown.

It's also worth noting that we finished up the last bathroom of tiling, and after the partitions the bathrooms will be all set except fixtures. So we're still moving along on Crosscut and we're looking forward to seeing some major progress now that the retreat season is over.

Thanks for following and God bless.

Bunk Beds and Coloring

2011-02-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

This week was our last big retreat of the Winter. We had a combined retreat, with both sides of the lake meeting on the East Side. This was the first weekend that I made it to most of every chapel. Our speaker was Kempton Turner and he emphasized the fact that for all our struggling and fighting we can't fill the hole that God has put in our hearts. It's bottomless and we need the bottomless savior, Jesus Christ. We spent time moving snow to the tubing hill again, then we had consistent snowfall the rest of the weekend. Now we just have one more weekend with some college/career campers and a smaller teen retreat.

Crosscut has been getting a lot closer to completion, and we're still hoping to finish it before the summer. It's really in God's hands right now as there are a lot of different things to get done, and we tend to get distracted by other, more pressing projects around camp. One of the huge tasks is making 48 bunk beds for the sleeping units. I went with the maintenance guys to help sand some of the materials with an industrial sander. I have a video posted below. My last one didn't work for everyone, but I'm trying again anyways. Note the amount of material, and that we put each piece through the sander at least 4 times.

Today I've spent some time with Samuel Ford and Titus Brown. We were coloring a little, and then playing some Star Wars games for Playstation 1 and Super Nintendo. They are a little more difficult than the Lego Star Wars that Sammy is used to at home. Here are some pictures, including a scandalous piece that Titus completed from my "King David" coloring book.

Thanks for the following. If you'd like to pray for me, pray for my health. It's the sick season it seems like, and I've been trying to hold of a cold for weeks it seems like. I'm really looking forward to running in the grass, and kicking the soccer ball around.

The Big Melt

2011-02-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

After 3 days of warm temperatures here, everything was pretty sloppy around camp. Some of the golf carts looked like they might submerge, and we could have gone skiing on roads if we wanted to. The skating rinks were in a sad state and the tubing hill was pitiful on Friday morning. We shoveled onto the hill for a couple hours on Friday morning, and that saved one of the lanes for the weekend. As for the rink, Titus Brown pulled an all nighter to lay enough ice for the campers to try it out on Saturday.

This week me and Mike Baker added a railing to the back steps of Tamarack, cleaned up our assignments, and spent some time cutting wood. The railing on Tamarack was a fix to make sure nobody takes a spill off the back porch. I'll remember putting this railing up cause now I can't leap off the back porch on the way to the dining hall or chapel. Well... not without clearing the railing as well.

Well the campers had a good time from what I could tell. I was happy to see several good friends come up to camp as workers and sponsors this weekend. The weather doesn't really stop the fun around here. I believe that God affects the people that come here in such a way that all of our attitudes remain positive despite trying circumstances. Like most of Michigan we're piling up snow here, hopefully enough for all the weekend activities.

Fire Meeting

2011-02-14T18:04:00.000-08:00

Camp Barakel has a lot of unique aspects for a Christian Camp, one of which is that we have our own Fire Department. We have a history of fires and because of our isolated location it's hard for the Fire Department to get here in a timely manner. We've accumulated equipment over the years, including a fire truck, water tank truck, and a fire bus that we carry personal turnout gear, like these guys are wearing.

This week we met to work on our SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus) training. In case of a fire, we have the equipment to send men into a smoky building to get anyone out of there using the SCBA equipment. The fumes in a burning building can knock someone out in just a couple breaths, so we need this equipment to help us breath fresh air while searching for anyone that might still be in the building. In the meantime we pray that we don't have any of these situations to deal with, but we still try to be ready to do whatever we can to ensure safety before the Fairview Fire Department shows up.

Last weekend was another Teen retreat (like every week in the winter) with Couples on the East Side. Some friends from Battle Creek, the Penrod's, were up for the weekend. It was really encouraging to be able to visit with them. Now we are experiencing some really warm temperatures and the roads are an ice rink while we're hoping the actual ice rink survives the week. Work continues on Crosscut with Dan Haines tiling, Mike Alchin installing lights, and Mike Baker heading up the bathroom partitions.

We have 3 more weeks of camp, all of them teens except a little dose of the college/career age in March. The season seems to fly by and I find myself trying to pause and pray for the folks that have been here over the last 6 weekends. Glory to God in the highest, Sing! Glory to God.

Dump Truck Stuck

2011-02-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

This is pretty much the week in photos.

We needed some more wood in the West Side Dining Hall, so we stuffed wood into my truck until it was about to burst.

The wood is now above the cab and the bumper is close to the ground.

It was good that we finished the wood load early in the week, because we had about 10 inches fall during the huge snowstorm. Not as much as I was hoping for, but enough to keep us hopping all weekend.

These bleachers are a common sight all summer, but they were almost buried overnight. All the snow means we have two guys dedicated to plowing for a day or two.

And now for the fun! We did some experimenting with a big plow and about 2 minutes into it we had a dump truck in the ditch. Whenever something is stuck, the Skytrak is usually on the way in a hot second.

After wiggling around in the ditch for a while we almost got the truck out by getting a bit of a running start. The ditch was just too steep and the bottom blade got jammed onto the bank. We needed the Skytrak to just shove it back into the ditch for another idea.

We decided to take the plow off, making it a little easier to maneuver the dump truck.

Can't get enough equipment, right? The Ford Tractor has a little bit better traction than the Skytrak, so Tim Morris brought that out. It helped a lot by clearing out some of the snow in the ditch, and pushing the dump truck around when it got jammed.

Our fearless driver, Mike Alchin!

After a couple more running starts that left us hanging just a little short we finally just grabbed a load of pine logs, and slab wood to make a ramp.

That's the peanut gallery. When they weren't laughing at the spectacle of the whole thing, they would throw out ideas on how to get out of the ditch.

A little big of a traffic jam. The truck was stuck right off the main camp road near the entrance. So we had a lot of folks stop by to check us out.

So that was most of the week really. Not just getting a truck out of the ditch, but dealing with the snow, and cleaning the cabins and lodges both inside and outside. This weekend we crossed the half way point of the season as we saw Teens and Father/Daughters come through. With all the snow I've also been riding my motorcycle around a little. As a kid it seemed like we did a lot of snow riding, but I'm basically trying to figure out how to keep the dirtbike upright on the roads.

Oh, and I'd be quite remiss if I didn't share what happened with the dump truck in the end:

Old Boots

2011-01-31T17:53:00.000-08:00

The snow keeps coming a little bit at a time, but it has been adding up. For the most part I've mentioned that our work is indoors at Crosscut over the last couple weeks, but with all of that work we've been neglecting the fire wood around camp. So this week we spent a lot of time splitting wood, then moving it where it's needed, like the West Side Dining Hall and the East Side Chapel. We also cut a lot of wood down in the woods, and with all this snow that means I need my heavy duty boots.

I've had these boots for something like 12 years. I think my dad bought them for me one winter when I was in 8th grade. These boots have been with me through all kinds of sledding, snowshoeing, and now woodcutting. I'm baffled that any kind of shoes could last this long for me. Most of my shoes are destroyed within a year. These boots keep me warm and help me to ignore the deep snow while we fill my truck to the brim with fire wood. I know it's kind of weird to talk so much about an old pair of boots, but I do thank God for a good pair of old boots.

Retreats keep going along strong. This week I wasn't scheduled for the tubing hill at all, opening me up to play the boxdrum in chapel a couple times. After another full weekend of hockey and dishes I woke up on Monday morning with frozen pipes in the trailer. I couldn't find anything obviously out of place, but we definitely didn't have any water coming through. Hopefully we'll figure out what's going on in the next couple days.

We're through with 4 weekend retreats and we'll see the first ever Father/Daughter Winter retreat this coming weekend. Other than that, I just keep busy almost every night, but I'm still missing some of my friends from Battle Creek, and Summer Camp.

Snow and Work

2011-01-24T18:10:00.000-08:00

It snowed! A lot. So much that they cancelled school in Fairview, and we had plenty for our tubing hill. This weekend was our last Father/Son retreat and many of our guests on both sides of the lake were familiar faces from over the summer. They were able to enjoy the most snow of all the retreats this year, and also the coldest temperatures. I don't look at a thermometer very often, but when I'm getting cold while playing hockey I know it's in the negatives. This weekend I was even able to play some broomball with one of the Father/Son teams.

Before the weekend came we were able to accomplish a lot on Crosscut Lodge. Dan Haines has been down there working on the tile for weeks now, but this week he had company. Mike Alchin has been installing lights and fans throughout the lodge, and Mike Baker has been setting up the bathroom partitions. I've been able to help out a little with all three of them, but most of my work this week was with the partitions. While the Mike's plowed the snow all over camp, I unboxed and sorted all the materials for the bathroom partitions. By Friday we we were well into the shower stalls for our first bathroom unit.

Throughout this work I've picked up a cold/fever sort of thing that really jumped me Sunday night, and most of Monday. I'm praying that the symptoms would fade, and I wouldn't miss any work for it, especially on the upcoming weekend. More importantly I pray for the work that we've been doing here on the weekends. I enjoyed going early to a chapel service on the East Side and listening to the musicians play. From the balcony I can get a good look at what the weekends are all about as fathers and sons gather around fire places, preparing to hear from God's word.

So here comes another week. Time continues to fly by during this busy Winter season.

Snow Required

2011-01-17T19:37:00.000-08:00

This week was a little bit different than normal for me and Mike Baker. We've received very little snow and what we did get was really powdery, so we took the mission of trying to groom the tubing hill. It's something that camp has tried before with some success, but at the cost of a lot of cold hours with the "Backyard Blizzard". So Mike and I started out by just watering the hill to ice it up a little, then dragging snow from all over the valley to layer the snow. We were thankful for help from 3 of the other folks on seasonal staff because moving snow can be pretty grueling stuff.

Our efforts seemed to be helping firm up the snow, so we kept at it while considering more options. We had decided the Backyard Blizzard should at least be tested, but that turned out to be its own adventure. The cover of the machine has 7 easy steps for starting up, and it even says after the steps, "You're Making Snow!". It turns out that after sitting for years the snow machine was frozen up pretty good, then we had issues with the hoses freezing. We finally got it spraying a slurry of snowy/icy/watery stuff on Thursday evening. Just then we tried to move it to where we needed the snow, and the connection for the water hose broke off. It was pretty much the last straw for us. We fiddled with it a little more, but couldn't get it to work very consistently. So it turns out it doesn't make snow necessarily.

It's funny how we can spend a straight week coming up with all kinds of ideas to make snow and firm up the snow we already have, but then the weather changes and it so effortlessly drops from the sky. Kind of a humbling experience as God dumped about 3 inches on us Friday night and the hill was successful all weekend. So now I think I'll have a different perspective as I see the air full of thick and fluffy snow. I also was able to spend some time down in Crosscut one afternoon. We may have to rename the building "Dan's Hermitage" as our newest Full Time Staff has spent about 2 months straight down there. It's time well spent though, as he's doing a marvelous job laying tile in the bathrooms.

So I'm thankful for all the staff that we have here. It makes it possible for us to get a lot of work done throughout the week at camp. In other news I've been participating in a Bible study that Randy Harris has been hosting for some of the local teens. I've enjoyed gathering, praying, and studying with these guys for 2 weeks, and I'm looking forward to this continuing throughout the season. Camp saw another Teen Retreat and a Father/Son retreat pass through over the weekend, with Don Jackson and Tom Harmon preaching.

Thanks for following! Glory to God for all the work we've been able to do on camp and more importantly, with the campers.

Tis the Season

2011-01-10T20:36:00.000-08:00

Tis the season for campers. I've mentioned that I've been missing campers and it's been nice to see them at camp, especially kids. It would be the first kids to camp since about September. It's also the season for hockey. My first impression of many of the staff kids here is on the ice. It's right down the hill from my trailer, and we're able to play hockey all weekend and a couple times along the week. We play a pretty simple version of hockey, but any of the kids that can skate end up down there for some fun and exercise. I'm also taking part in a Bible study with some High Schoolers from Fairview. Our first meeting was Sunday night, and I'm looking forward to studying the book of Job and getting to know some more local folks.

In other news the work continues throughout the week. Our maintenance crew is laying tile in Crosscut Lodge and cutting up dead trees around camp. We also had to tidy up our cabins before the campers came up on Friday. I even saw a couple of the maintenance guys helping to make some Cheerio Treats in the dining hall Friday morning.

This weekend we welcomed a Father/Son retreat along with a Teen Retreat. One of our speakers, Don Jackson, came up early to talk to the staff about the generation of teens that we minister to throughout the Winter. One thing he mentioned was that camp had a lot of safe thrills, which is a good thing when we're inviting teens up every weekend all Winter. The big news at camp was that we didn't have enough good snow for the tubing hill to open. It could have been a disappointment, but instead we opened up Thunder Express and everyone that wanted to could swing over and get a snowy thrill.

So camp is on again. I'm back to the work I've been looking forward to and praying about. Please pray with me as we trust God to bring the right kids to camp at the right time to make an impact on their lives.

Driving in the New Year

2011-01-02T22:21:00.000-08:00

2010 saw a lot of adjustments in my life. I've been committed to working at Camp Barakel as seasonal staff for a solid year now. Over that time I've been part of insulating, paneling, shingling, fixing, cleaning, wood cutting, tubing, dish washing, counseling, programing, babysitting, driving, drumming just to list off a couple. Now I'm looking forward to starting the cycle all over again with my commitment to another year of camp.

To celebrate the New Year I made it to my first Ultimate Frisbee tournament in quite a while. The Grand Rapids indoor tournament is a blast whenever I've participated and this year was no exception. I was able to hook up with some of my Michigan Tech friends and we made a team that did really well throughout the tournament. What didn't do so well was my legs. They haven't been beat down like this in a long time and they showed it in some bad cramps in my calves, quads, and hamstrings that spread out throughout the tournament. By the end we'd won 3 of our 4 games, and we had a lot of fun along the way.

As soon as the tournament was over in Grand Rapids I blasted off for a New Years Eve party in Auburn Hills, north of Detroit. We played a lot of games, watched a couple movies, ate a lot of food, stayed up late, and participated in a fantastic talent show. As the party finished winding down on Saturday night, I drove out for Battle Creek so I could play drums at church on Sunday morning. The miles keep piling up in my car. After church I was able to help take Rob and Elizabeth's engagement photos. (Side note: Three of my best friends have been married or engaged. To three Elizabeth's. We'll have a McAdam's, Moody, and Murphy). Here's an unauthorized sneak peak off my phone.

So another busy week, but now I'm pretty much in the clear to return to camp. I'll be able to catch up with a couple more people in Battle Creek, but other than that it'll be pick up, pack up, peace out. It's been a challenging year, but through the struggle I learn to depend on God to support me more. Please pray for our campers over the next 10 weeks as they are presented with the Gospel and a good time.

A Very Stuffy Christmas

2010-12-26T21:23:00.000-08:00

Anothered scattered week for me as I try to catch up with everyone. On Tuesday I said good bye to the Barakel people that had visited and then I left to take one of them home myself. That lead to a whirlwind trip to St. Johns (through Holt and Haslett) where I was able to see some Barakel friends, and a Michigan Tech friend in the morning. After that I hustled over to Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning and visited U of M. I got to see a lot of the campus as well as visiting the tree that Tim Houston broke himself on last week.

I didn't stay there long because I had dinner plans in Battle Creek. So in one day I started in St. Johns, drove to Ann Arbor, and eventually landed in Battle Creek. Over this one trip I was able to see people from the most important parts of my life (High School, College, and Barakel). From December 8th through the 22nd I've put a solid 650 miles on the car, and it'll be another 600 miles by the time I return if everything goes as planned. While driving I've seen some interesting things, but this house that took up most of two lanes was definitely the most interesting.

I spent the rest of the week in Battle Creek. I had a blast playing volleyball with some folks from Riverwalk church and my Dad. They've been a joy every time I've returned from camp, always ready to catch up and hear how the work is going at camp. I also went shopping with my Floridian friends, the Knapp's. It's neat to see them so much over 2 weeks like this. While at Barnes and Noble I found a weird book with "tickle fingers" included. I thought I'd try them on and the Cuddle Monster came out for bit.

Christmas Eve is always busy for me. I went to my church for a communion service and then attended Midnight Mass at St Philip Catholic Church. I'm not Catholic, but the service is very a very sobering yet joyful presentation. They have a small orchestra and choir that always does a great job. Maybe because we stayed out so late, or maybe because of all my traveling I ended up waking up sick on Christmas morning. Me and Mom slept in til after 10am and I personally spent most of the day lounging around and resting.

So I'm looking forward to getting rid of this runny nose before the New Year rolls around. I would honestly rather be sick now instead of at camp where I would want to be working. Here I can rest most of the day and not feel too bad. We'll be hosting campers at Camp Barakel in less than 2 weeks and I'm already started to get excited. It's good God glorifying work that impacts the lives of our campers.

My Travels Continue

2010-12-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

After returning from Florida this week, it's been a bit of a whirlwind trip across the state. I was able to spend some quality time sledding, which is definitely one of my favorite activities of the winter and one that I've been looking forward to for months. Thanks to friends in Rochester that have some of the best hills I've seen since Michigan Tech. From Detroit I headed over to Lansing for two Camp Barakel events.

First we had the STEP Reunion (Summer Tech and Engineer Program) where we're able to hang out with some of the high school kids that help camp make it through the summer. Not only does their time at camp support our efforts to spread the Gospel, it also helps them develop work ethic and to learn more about what God can do through them. The next day we went met with the mostly college aged summer staff.

Over the summer our free time always goes "clean, move, play", but at the Barakel Bash we are able to eat, play, and sing. It's a great time to maintain the fellowship that we develop throughout the summer. During the Bash we play games in the gym, meet people from other years, reconnect with resident staff members, sing songs from the summer, and generally encourage one another. I know I was really looking forward to it and I was not disappointed.

After the Bash some people were able to join me in Battle Creek and we kind of extended the Bash with movies, cards, and we even did some skating. One of Battle Creek's supposed claims to fame is the International Festival of Lights. It used to be a huge thing when I was a kid, or it seemed like it at least. Now many of the displays are falling apart and it's not in the state I remember it. While walking through town we enjoyed many of the lights they have around camp, and we even got a chance to talk to some of the people that put it together. They explained that the lights are being replaced with LED lights, and it looks like the Festival will be improving over the next years.

So the lights were fun to check out, and we were able to see how the city is doing. This break has been a rush and it's going to continue like that for the rest of the Holiday season. Thanks for following, and have a Merry Christmas!

Freezing Florida

2010-12-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

Two of my friends from Battle Creek moved down to Florida about 3 years ago. They've offered to put me up whenever I can make it into Jacksonville, and I've taken them up on that 3 times now. This week is the 4th trip down to Florida. Someone pointed out cheap tickets, so I purchased one and headed down.

For the first few days I spent a lot of time relaxing at the house while Steve and Jen worked at their school a couple blocks away. I spent a fair amount of time reading on the new porch they've added since my last visit. I was also able to help out with Steve's junior high soccer team. After the Barakel fun run last week my legs were still pretty sore, and these junior high schoolers took advantage. Part of helping the team out was watching their game on Friday night. These talented kids mercied the other team 8-0 in the first half, and that's with most of their players pulled back onto defense. It's fun to see these skilled kids dominating, but also just having fun playing the sport they like.

The temperature was fairly cold, but not anything like what Michigan has been experiencing this week. So we made our way around town. We played disc golf, ate at some fine dining establishments, attended their church, and then Steve had a special surprise for me Sunday afternoon. I didn't know it, but he'd been planning to take me to a Jaguars game. So after finding tickets online we ran over to pick them up, then hustled over to the game just a couple minutes into the first quarter. It's been a long time goal of mine to see a game of each of the 4 major leagues. I've been to several Red Wings games, a couple of Pistons games, and a Tigers game. The game was fantastic with lots of scoring and it wasn't decided until the last minute.

It's been a good trip to Florida and we still have a couple more days, but I am looking forward to seeing some snow in Michigan. Hopefully we'll get another round of disc golf in, and some more practices with the soccer team. Thanks for following, and I look to seeing many of you over the next couple weeks!

Camp and Campers

2010-12-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

So we're coming to the end of the year here at Camp Barakel. The maintenance department has been punching out projects left and right. This week alone we've worked on grouting the stone in Crosscut, rebuilding the Boeve's garage door, chainsaw maintenance, and some updates to one of the boxes we store wood in. The work is good, but it sure has been cold outside.

Speaking of the cold, it's been bitterly cold up here the last couple days. This morning on the way to church the car said it was 24 degrees outside. On top of the cold we've gotten a little bit of snow that translated into a sheet of ice on the roads around here. That led to one of the camp men sliding his camp truck into a tree. Another guy, Dave Douglas, organized a fun run from Fairview into camp. We had 4 people from camp run about 6 miles in the chilly weather for what was an average time of an hour. On top of that we had one other adventure. Titus Brown has wanted to get into the icy water for some time so he decided the first day of real snow on the first day of December would be a good opportunity to get in the water.

I'll be saying goodbye to camp on Tuesday for about a month. I'm really looking forward to seeing some campers at camp when I return in January. Walking through the West Side Dining Hall has been where I've really been missing the campers. It's a reminder that all the work we've been doing since November is all an effort to prepare for spreading the Gospel to our campers. So the work continues here, even as the snow starts falling and the temperature takes a bitter turn.

Thanks for following!

Reflecting at Home

2010-11-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

That's a picture of the soccer field I played on in high school. After being home for a week I've walked and jogged past it several times. It's right around the corner from me and the place carries a lot of memories for me, as well as a lot of fun obstacles for me to climb and jump over. Not only did I play 4 years of soccer there, I also attended the Math and Science Center on the same property. It's a great place for me to get some fresh air and take a minute away from the business of the holiday season.

Another place I spend time is Pizza Sam's. Our Youth Pastor, two of his sons, and my buddy Rob all work there. On any given night during the holiday season you can find me playing euchre with friends and eating my Hawaiian delight pizza sub. On this trip I spent more time trying to clean than visiting with people. Since I haven't been home for more than a week over the last year, my room had become quite messy. Every time I stop at home things get rearranged a little, but this is the first time I stopped to clean up.

It was a year ago that I was considering going to camp for seasonal staff. I was already planning to apply to work at camp when my engineering project at Post Foods was coming to an end and I felt it was the time God had planned for me to jump into ministry. Since then I'd like to say I've not looked back. The truth is I didn't for the first several months, but once money started getting a little tighter I'll admit that I've looked back at a career in engineering from time to time. It was a financial blessing at the time, but I need to remember that God will provide enough for me wherever I am.

Now I'm all set for most of another year of serving at Camp Barakel. Please pray that I would remember the line I drew when I left engineering. Pray that I'd have confidence in His ability to provide for my needs.

Seasonal Stretch and Extra Help

2010-11-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

I've been the only Seasonal staff guy all Fall so far, and this week has shown how we could use a couple more. We worked on four major projects this week, and I ended up helping with all of them in some way or another.

Most of my work has been with Dan Haines in Crosscut. We've been putting up stone around the great room. It's quite a bit of mixing mud and careful placement of pieces, but it looks good with the room. We've had help from Titus Brown and Brad Smith along the way.

Mike Baker has been working on the new porch for Pine Cabin, finishing up the ceiling. His Father-in-Law came for a morning and helped Mike with some of the cutting. I also helped out with lifting some of the large plywood ceiling pieces that were too big for one person. In the meantime Mike Alchin has replaced some tile in the East Side Dining Hall while also replacing and repairing many of the lights in Snow Valley. I was able to use the Skytrak to lift Mike and an electrician that offered us some help this week.

Even with all the extra workers we had throughout the week, I ended up getting pulled back and forth a little bit. Sometimes the guys just need an extra pair of hands. It was the first time I could really see that having a couple more guys on seasonal staff makes it a lot easier to get a lot of work done. It was neat to see some of the unexpected help that showed up during such a busy week of work.

On Friday I left camp for a week at home. On the way I stopped in Rochester to see some of the summer staff. One of the greatest things about camp has been the people I've been able to meet from all over. I'm trying to use my trips to and from camp as opportunities to keep those relationships up. With the holiday season approaching, I'm hoping I can take advantage of the opportunities to swing to Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Detroit to catch up with friends.

That's it for now.

Mostly Pictures

2010-11-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

I mentioned last week that we were working on the porch of Pine Cabin. Well before we had the major support under it we had a collapse. We were using a couple of support 2x4's and one of them wiggled its way into a hole we had prepared for the 6x6 supports. Me and Mike Alchin were actually on the roof at the time and thank God we didn't get hurt beyond a couple bumps and bruises.

So we started over with the porch after that exciting morning and we were able to get the whole building shingled over the week.

With gun season opening up this Monday it seemed like it would be fun to go out and shoot the shotgun. I'd never shot the double barrel until this week. It was heavy enough to hold off most of the recoil.

This is my first full weekend staying at camp and it gave me enough time to play on the piano a little. Dan Haines and I were able to get together with his guitar as well.

New Stuff and Old Stuff

2010-11-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

We just had our first full weekend off this Fall. Many of the staff families traveled accross the state to visit family and friends that often get neglected during our 6 day work week during the retreat seasons. With a weekend off comes a normal work schedule too. We've now transferred to a 5 day, 8am-5pm work schedule. A lot of folks around here enjoy going to church like normal for the few weekends we are able to.

I chose to spend my first weekend at home. When I go home my two main goals are to catch up with friends and to surf the internet. That's two things I don't get to do much at camp. So for this trip I stopped in St Johns to drop off a lost and found Bible and then I ended up spending the rest of the day bowling and hanging out at the famous Davis house. After that, I pretty much turned into a loaf. I spent Saturday morning waiting for a replacement phone, and trying to get my contacts back up to date. Sunday was great as I was able to play drums at Garrison Hills. After church I headed up to camp, hooking up with the Ford family caravan along the way.

As for work, we powered through a quarter of the East Side Dining Hall roof in about 3 full weeks of work. It's really nice to see the project get so close to the end. Now, as a break from shingling the Dining Hall we are... you guessed it! Shingling Pine Cabin. We're hoping it'll be a much simpler shingling job without a valley or so many pipes sticking out of the roof. It can't be too simple though, so we're also adding a porch to the front of the cabin. It'll be a large porch with enough room for benches under, very similar to Heritage Lodge. I can already see important conversations between counselors and campers happening on it.

With Winter and the holidays approaching I'm looking forward to several trips home, and some time to relax with friends. In the meantime the work doesn't stop at Camp Barakel. Pray for safety as we run around on yet another frosty roof!

Jack and Jill Weekend

2010-11-01T19:12:00.000-07:00

If you live in Michigan then you probably know about the wind we've seen this weekend. Around here the wind knocked down so many trees that it would be hard to count them all. Out of the thousands of trees that fell, we had almost no damage. We had a couple close call like a tree that broke some fencing in front of Heritage Lodge (pictured), and another that landed on the West Side trading post. I think the only thing that we had to fix was 4 lengths of split rail fence and a bit of retaining wall that we pushed a tree down onto. Because of all these trees, the construction crew spent most of the time cutting wood. We probably ended up cleaning up about 20 trees of all sizes before the week was over.

All these trees ended up being a blessing as we had about 50 people coming to help out for the weekend. It's called Jack and Jill weekend and we welcomed 25 former summer staff along with a work group from Five Points (a supporting church). Camp organizes and assigns the work projects while providing meals and snacks for all the help. My work group cleaned up and reset the targets on the East Side Archery range, seeded the range, raked leaves around the East Side cabins, and mauled wood to be shuffled to buildings all over camp. I also took a small group of folks who fixed the split rail fence and the retaining wall that were damaged by falling trees around Heritage. We also picked up a tree off of a walking path and dragged it back to the maintenance yard.

I don't even know the complete list of projects that were completed in these 8 hours of hard work, but it's very evident as you drive around camp and it looks good. Piles of brush have been dragged away, leaves have been raked, and all the buildings have big stacks of wood in them. It's a huge help to have so many people come up and volunteer time for the weekend. The work isn't all though because Saturday night and Sunday morning we are able to just hang out. It's funny to think of, but even though we spend the summer working together we don't really get to relax together much. Friendships are renewed over this weekend, and I think many people get a small bit of Camp Barakel that they've been missing since the Summer ended.

Thanks for following!