Mike and Cody's Greenhouse

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.