Faith, Hope and Backhoes

 When Judah was 4, the only thing he wanted for Christmas was a backhoe. I didn’t quite understand what he liked about backhoes – or even how he knew anything about them. I should have realized. A little boy only has to watch a big yellow machine one time to get it stuck in his head. Last Monday I spent some time watching a backhoe at work. Earl Gabbard and Arthur Back came over to the camp and did a bunch of work for us. I was fascinated by the power and the flexibility of the machine. I missed those days of homeschooling when I would have sent the boys outside to watch what was going on. My girls were slightly interested when we watched the backhoe together, but mostly they were concerned with picking dandelions (”lion-dils”) and rescuing mismatched, ancient flip-flops (”flip-shoes”) that had been left on the playground. When I was driving the boys home from the bus stop, I was telling them about watching the backhoe push a tree down. I’d never seen anything like it, and I thought it was extremely interesting. Judah offhandedly said, “Oh, I’ve seen that before.” Burst my bubble… Guess who spends more time outside around big machinery. Obviously not mom.

On Friday, Mark Driskill and Scott Hollan brought Boy Scout troop #185 to Bethel Camp. They camped out overnight and spent much of Saturday doing work projects. They lopped the branches off the tree that was pushed down and hauled them to a burn pile. Someday soon the rest of the tree will be sawed up into benches to be placed around a campfire ring or two. During the summer, we usually have one main campfire service each week, but it’s also nice to occasionally be able to send each cabin of kids out to build their own campfire. There’s just something about sitting around a fire in the darkness with a group of people that brings out conversation and deepens bonds of friendship. And the music around a campfire! Why does it always sound so much better than songs stuck between the walls of a building?

Have you ever listened to a song over and over again, memorized it and sung along with it, and then all of a sudden… you’re listening to it and something clicks… and you understand what the writer meant? I had one of those moments recently with the song “No More Faith” by Andrew Peterson.

Lord, I believe / Only help my unbelief
Till there’s no more faith / No more hope
I’ll see your face and Lord, I’ll know
That only love remains

I realized that he was referring to 1 Corinthians 13 - “Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” But what’s going to happen to faith and hope? Why would they disappear and leave only love? You know what I think? Faith and hope are both about waiting for something that is to come. On the day that I see Jesus’ face, there will be nothing left to hope for, and no reason to have faith in anything better to come. I’ll be face to face with the only person who can fulfill all of my desires. All that will be left for me to do is love.

But as to faith… and hope… There’s a little Tonka backhoe around here somewhere that’s spent countless hours in the sandbox, digging hole after hole and moving piles of sand from one spot to another. “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (The present came from his Papaw & Mam-Mam, but I think the same principle applies.) Have a great week!

bunny fun

 Our family is seriously into bunnies these days. We started out (once we managed to keep some rabbits alive for more than 3 days) with a mama bunny and her two big babies. Then we inherited a daddy and another mommy from some friends who had had enough of rabbits for awhile. Now we’ve got a whole bunny colony up under the porch of Krestan Hall. Roger made a bunch of rabbit hutches – he used the metal casing of an old air conditioner for one of them J – and Judah and Wesley have the responsibility of taking care of them. Whenever they sell a bunny, they get to put the money in a box where they keep it until they need to buy rabbit food. Thinking about rabbits makes me want to read “Watership Down” again. Maybe it’s about time to pull that one out and read it to the boys.

A few of the rabbits have names, but I can only think of three right now: Snowflake, Mr. Snugglekins and Go-Up-the-Ramp (Malin chose that name because “it likes to go up the ramp” in its cage.) Every so often, the kids will let one or more of the bunnies out to run around free for awhile. I get a kick out of watching them try to chase them down. If you get to camp this summer, you may get a chance to hold a baby bunny or two. (Or help the Voth and Driskill kids catch them.) Maybe that should be a new team game? The first team to capture all their bunnies (without hurting or traumatizing them) wins the prize?

On a more relevant note (relevant to camp anyway) Darren Fisher continues to diligently tackle the maintenance and groundskeeping issues here. He’s mastered the art of replacing broken and cracked window panes around camp. (Thanks to Mary Gambill and Jeff Watts at True Value Hardware for cutting the glass accurately.) And he made some nice signs to label the main hiking trails on the camp property. Roger took a hike up to Big Rock with Judah and Wesley, and the boys were always excited to spot the next yellow arrow sign along the trail. Darren has also put up new chain nets on the basketball court and some more powerful lights so we can play basketball in the evenings. If you’re ever looking for a place to play ball, or want to bring your kids over to play on the playground… that’s what it’s here for.

stuffing (board meeting) envelopes

 Sometime this winter, Malin (my 4-year-old) and Wesley (my 6-year-old) were playing on the living room floor with a bunch of matchbox cars and a big board. They had lined up 30 or 40 cars in rows on the board, and like the camp director’s kids that they are, they were setting them up for a “board meeting.” Malin was starting to put a red car in line with the others when Wesley stopped her and said, “No, not that one! He’ll get too bored! ..… That’s why it’s called a board meeting.”

I don’t know what your feelings are about board meetings, but I always kind of look forward to the weekends when the Bethel Camp board members get together. True, I may be looking through the rose-colored glasses of the director’s wife who doesn’t have to sit still (or act as recording secretary!) during the whole meeting. But we do have an excellent group of board members. They’re people who we respect and enjoy being with. The board is our decision-making body, and their leadership helps to guide the day-to-day tasks that we’re in charge of. It’s good to sit around a table (for hours on end, even) with people who love the Lord and who work together to plan for the future of Bethel Camp.

Last week we sent out invitations to our 50^th Anniversary Celebration – 1650 of them. (Obviously we’re not asking the elite few to our celebration weekend.) On Wednesday, Pauline Yoder and Ella June Miller spent the morning with me, sticking address labels on envelopes while Roger ran to Ma & Pa’s printing shop to get our papers folded on their nifty machine. Floyd & Beulah Coomer have done a lot of our printing – of newsletters and registration forms – and we are grateful that Floyd was willing to take time out of his busy day to run those papers through his folding machine. Not to mention Beulah, who fed Roger like a king before sending him on his way! After lunch (the 3^rd meal of the day for Roger) the four of us sat and stuffed each of those envelopes with a schedule and a registration form.

Later that evening, I was feeling thankful for the inventor of the little gadget that seals our envelopes. Can you imagine licking 1650 envelopes?? It took more than a cup of water to seal them all. I’m not sure my saliva glands would have been able to keep up…

The last envelope was finally sealed around 9:30 that evening. Thank you, Ella June and Pauline for offering to spend your day here. It meant a lot, and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation as we worked – as well as Pauline’s amazing brown sugar cookies!

a camp office memory

It’s been a busy week here at camp, but not an exciting one. Roger has been doing lots of the behind-the-scenes part of being a camp director: sending out thank-you notes and receipts for financial gifts, getting letters out to board members, trying to figure out how to maintain the camp web page. (Now there’s a confusing job. He was trying to teach me how to do a few things with web design this morning. I picked up a little bit, but mostly I gained a new respect for web designers! If you’ve never visited our web page, check it out at www.bethelcamp.org. Don’t expect perfection – it’s still being worked on.)

So he’s spent most of the week in the office, which doesn’t give me a lot of camp news to share. But… I can’t help but think of the first time that I remember sitting in the camp office. It was the summer after my junior year of high school, and my family had talked me into coming up from North Carolina with my brother to be a counselor for day camp. I wasn’t that excited about trying something new, but I came, and after spending a week on staff, I was hooked – I didn’t want to go home. The last day of camp that week, Phil Swartzentruber (camp director at the time) told me I could stay for the next week if it was okay with my parents. I remember so vividly sitting in that creaky swivel chair in the office, calling home and asking my dad if I could stay for another week. I was almost in tears, worried that he was going to say no. I remember as he was talking with me, trying to figure out my reasons for wanting to stay, he said, “You’re having a mountain-top experience right now. Don’t forget that you have to come down sometime.” It was good advice – and of course I did come down, but I also got to spend one more week “on top of the mountain” that summer.

I’d spent several weeks here as a camper when I was younger, but I think that first week on staff marks the time that I really started to fall in love with Bethel Camp. Now I see that same thing happening to other teenagers. They come for a week as a counselor, and it’s just not enough. They leave at the end of the week and then send Roger an email saying, “I’m free for the rest of the summer. Let me know if you need me. I would LOVE to come back.” Or we get a staff application in the mail from someone who wants to be on staff every week during the summer. It’s a tiring, 24-hour job, and they don’t get paid for it. But those young adults who pour themselves into the lives of younger kids for a week or more are a big part of the reason why those campers keep coming back, summer after summer.

And now, even in the off-season, when the campground looks dead and there are no sounds of campers running around outside, when the week’s agenda is full of office work and maintenance projects that few people will ever notice, our goal remains the same. We want to be ready for as many kids as possible to spend a week here at camp where they will have a chance to get to KNOW Christ, to GROW in Him, and to learn to SHOW Him to others.

Valentine’s Banquet

I wonder how many times I‘ve finished doing something and then thought, “Oh! I forgot the camera!” Saturday night was one of those moments. We had our annual Valentine’s Banquet here at Bethel Camp, and there was a very nice crowd of about 50 people who showed up. Our good friend Bill made the drive down from his home in Ohio simply to help us prepare the meal. Another friend, Jonathan Miller, from Lexington, along with his sister Audrey, brought their viola and violin and entertained us with some beautiful music.

As far as events go, it was a pretty typical Bethel Camp Valentine’s Banquet: music, good food, lots of talking, door prizes, and a small auction after the meal. Three loaves of Bill’s amazing Hawaiian bread were auctioned off for $23/loaf. Now that is good bread!

When our guests arrived, they were given a slip of paper with a request that they support Bethel Camp in prayer. I was impressed with how many people committed themselves to praying regularly for Bethel Camp. Several even committed to praying EVERY DAY from June ___ to July ____ - the dates that summer camp is in session. I wondered, if I was to attend a similar function for a different church, camp or school… if I was asked to pray every day, could I say yes? Would I trust myself to follow through with that promise? I think only if I truly believed in the cause – a person can’t pray every day for something or someone without caring about them.

So I forgot the camera. There will be no pictures to file away in albums to remind us of this night in 2007. We’ll be left with a nice number – the amount of money that was raised, and with a computer document of names of our guests. It won’t be long now until the events of this year’s Valentine’s Banquet mix and meld in my mind with memories from other banquets, other years. In the future there may not be specific moments about this evening that stand out to me. But in this moment, I am thankful – thankful for friends to work with, for friends who give generously, for friends to share a meal with, and for faithful friends who commit themselves to pray for this camp that is so much a part of my life. I thank God for the people who care enough to pray.

-Ruthie Voth