Coming and Going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.