Chicago Excitement

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.