S'mores and bonfires

Last night after a church service I attended, we had a bonfire back behind the church. It was the first bonfire of the season for me, and immediately it brought back thoughts of campfires down in the rec field, outpost, s'mores making, the smell of your clothes after standing around the campfire all evening, and trying not to melt your shoes/pants from standing too close to the fire!

This bonfire started off pretty large...they tried to light 4 or 5 wood pallets with gasoline...if only they had taken outdoor living skills! All you need is 1 match and some pine needles, right?! Well, after a few minutes, the guys in charge of the fire had a rip-roaring bonfire that shot up about 12 feet. Try to roast marshmallows off of that! Being hungry for my first s'more of the season, I ventured into the woods behind the church to find that perfect s'more stick. It was dark, so the first thing I found seemed perfect enough! Haha.

Let me tell you, no matter how large the fire or how dirty the stick...s'mores taste like s'mores! Is your mouth watering yet? After I enjoyed a *few* s'mores, I passed along the stick and just stood and enjoyed the fellowship with others and the warmth of the bonfire. There's something unique about gathering around a fire. What is it about being around a fire that brings such peace and fellowship, a desire to just sit and look at the fire?

When we're at camp, gathering around the campfire happens a lot. For sunday night campfire, outpost, activity classes, and the final friday night campfire. We get to worship, laugh, enjoy delicious desserts, and be out in God's creation. Being at the bonfire last night and having a s'more just made me more eager to be at camp and enjoy one of our campfires down in the rec field, or build a fire while on outpost or in the activity classes. I hope you are looking forward to that too.

Getting the word out

Hello again! It's probably been too long since we last updated, but things in the office have been busy. Hard to imagine being that busy when we aren't running camp, I bet you're thinking. As a matter of fact, we're in one of our busiest times of the off-season. Our brochure is out and in the hands of our camp friends and family. We anxiously await those registrations, and really do get exited about each one that comes through! We've already been to one camp fair this winter. The Metro Parent Summer Camp Fair was held January 29-30 in Ann Arbor and Beverly Hills. We had the opportunity to talk to a good amount of people, and even saw a few current campers!

Besides getting all of the promotional materials ready for the camp fairs we will be attending, we are in the process of creating packets of information to send to local churches, hoping to get the word out about Camp CedarRidge. Though we do have lists of churches, if you know of a church that you think would benefit from receiving that information (brochures, the dvd, flyers, an intro letter), please contact the camp office so that we can send one to them! We want to reach as many prospective campers as we can!

Thank you for your continued support and prayer! It is much appreciated!

Christmas

WOW! There's only 5 days left until Christmas and you can sense that people are in the christmas gift rush, going from store to store trying to find that gift their child, friend, coworker, you name it wants. As I've never been much of a shopper, it was somewhat overwhelming to go out on saturday to find some christmas gifts. 5 hours later I had everything I needed to exchange gifts with my family. I'm more of a personal gift giver, so I enjoy creating gifts that you won't typical buy.

One of the thoughts that I have had during this Christmas season is how important it is to spend time with those you love. Everybody probably hears the Christmas phrases like "He's the reason for the season" and we may not think much of them, but if you take a minute to stop and really think, there's more to it than just a phrase. The real reason we celebrate Christmas is the birth of Jesus. With his birth, we were given the remarkable gift of eternal life and our lives were changed forever by His birth and later, His sacrifice. And so I ask you, has Christ really changed your life? Try to think of it in terms of those Christmas gifts you are shopping for. Is that what Christmas really is about? Getting the right gift? Or spending it in worship of fellowship celebrating the birth of our Savior.

My challenge to you this week is to celebrate Christmas for THE reason of Christ's birth and the special time you get to spend with those you love because Jesus Christ was born and reigns in our hearts.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The past month

I apologize that we haven't posted in almost a month! With the holidays and new year quickly approaching, we have been quite busy in the office working to get our 2011 publications completed. The brochure looks great and we are hoping to send it off to be printed before the end of the week! We are excited for some of the new programs and dates that we have set for the 2011 season. Sorry, but you'll have to wait until the brochure comes out to see just what they are! We are planning on sending the brochures out before new years, and our registration should be open starting January 1st! The 2011 dates and information will also be up on our website in the next few weeks.

It's hard to believe that is already the second week in december. The fall seemed to fly by and a lot has happened. Many of you have already heard that Ptarmi had a house fire almost a week ago. She continues to meet with companies and insurance people to get her house put back. Please continue to pray for her. She probably won't be able to be back in her house until the spring, possibly closer to the summer, and soon she will be having to deal with the outcome of her belongings and clothing being cleaned and what did and didn't make it because of smoke and/or water damage. Once we have a better idea of what she needs, I would like to send out another email asking for help. If you haven't received the first few emails sent from info@campcedarridge.org, please email us to let us know and we'll be sure to include you from now on!

May God continue to bless and keep you in this Christmas season! Always remember the reason why we celebrate!

The perpetual "What do you do now" question...

From mid June through the end of August people know what we do! We do camp! The daily hustle and bustle up in the woods keeps us pretty busy as we have new programs start each week, new staff coming in and out, paperwork to log, inspections, campers to hang out with, and all the crazy campiness that goes on in the national forest.

And then we have the fall season when we travel back and forth almost every weekend for parent/child weekends and work weekends. Finally, in mid-late october, our site team blows out all the water lines so that the pipes don't freeze, turns off all the power, locks everything up, and closes camp for the winter.

And then we relax and take a vacation... NOT!!!

Although there is a bit of a lull in our schedule after all this happens, our work at the metro office is always keeping us busy. If you look back to last weeks post, we've got the fall newsletter to get out, fundraisers to execute (like the zoo walk) and communications to be made from the previous summer. One of the biggest tasks that is on our "to-do" list right now is the 2011 brochure. With that, we have to set our 2011 schedule, pricing, and programs. You're probably starting to get the picture that we still have work to do in the off season!

Then we have promotion. How are we supposed to reach out to new campers if we don't promote?! So that means creating a promo dvd, getting information about camp fairs and other promotional events, connecting with churches, and updating ALL of our forms so that they are ready come January to start registration!

All that to say....this is what we are doing now!!! I won't bore you with more details, but we just thought it would be nice to give an answer to that perpetual question!

Have a blessed week!

A lesson on the Lord's timing...not ours

This past week has been a good lesson on the Lord's timing at the Camp CedarRidge office. We have been working on the Fall Newsletter since the beginning of October, and had set October 27th as the date of mailing it out. But God had other plans!

The process of printing this newsletter involved printing both the newsletter page and our zoo walk page, which detailed that fundraiser and everything that went on that day. All together, we had to make over 4,500 copies! (since our newsletter is double sided) Our printer did pretty well with printing the single sided zoo walk page, and then as we were printing the front page of the newsletter, we started received the "replace toner" error from the printer. Thankfully, we had some toners ready to change out with the old ones! We made it through the front side printing, but then the "drum life" error showed up. This "drum life" error is not so fun! The image drums are what hold the toner and transfer the right amount onto the page. They have about a 15,000 page yield, and after finding out we hadn't replaced ours since May '09, it was no wonder why the drum life was gone! We were able to trick the printer into continuing to print, but when the image drum really began to fail we had to pause our printing until the new drums arrived in the mail.

All that to say, we weren't able to finish the printing portion of the newsletter until this past monday, 4 days after we were hoping to have it mailed!

The next step in the process is taking all our materials and stuffing, sealing, labeling, and counting our envelopes. Usually this process takes quite a few hours, and we normally dedicate a whole work day to this. But, as God's timing goes...it only took us 3 hours to complete! I think God understood our frustration from the previous week and blessed us yesterday with a quick finish!

The newsletter is now out in the mail on its way to you! What a good lesson on trusting that God's timing is best, and even though our expectations and desires aren't always met, He knows exactly what we need...exactly when we need it!

Blessings to you!

Makeover for the barn

A crew of workers traveled up to camp on friday to take on the large task of cleaning out the barn and then moving some of camps things in to be stored for the winter. If you've been down to the horses, you know that the barn is fairly large and it is the best place in camp to store things over the winter since it stays dry and we can lock everything up. During the season when we are at camp, we are able to use it to house lumber, tools, the tractor, our lawn mowers, and many other things. As the years have gone by, things have become "lost" in the barn, unfortunately! But this weekend was all about cleaning it up!

It was a bit rainy on saturday, but the crew was able to clean out and organize the lumber, build a few new racks to store the remaining lumber we had from paneling the ridge cabins, and take home metal that we will be able to scrap for some money among other things. They also dug out the wall to put in a groundhog (or chipmuck) block in. Hopefully that will keep the critters away over the winter!

It's a good feeling to be able to clean and organize something like the barn, and now we're able to store what we need to this winter!

Hope this post finds you enjoying this fall day. May you be blessed!