Bunk Beds and Coloring

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

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

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

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: