Camp happenings

I apologize for the absence of an update to this blog! A lot has happened since the last update. Our summer program is in full swing now and God is doing amazing things as always.

During the 4th of July week, we were blessed to have 8 families join us for a fun-filled week at Family Camp. Though the weather was a bit more chilly than we expected, it was still a great week. Our schedule at Family Camp is a bit more flexible, allowing for the families to choose which activities they would like to do in a day, or even just spend some time together as a family in and out of camp. A couple of the dads and sons really got into fishing during the week and were asking if we can run a fishing camp next year! : )
Since our schedule was more open, everyone was able to do just about every activity that they wanted. Praise God that the weather stayed decent and we didn't have to change to "rainy day activities" throughout the week.
We started out our week with the 2nd Annual Family Camp Egg Toss; a great time for creativity...and cleaning broken eggs off the Dining Hall deck! Our theme for the week was "Once Upon a Time", so many of our evening programs focused on stories and fairytales. It was fun to see kids running around being "knights" and fighting off our staff to save the princess Spreo!
We truly enjoyed serving these 8 families in their stay at HFCC, and hope that they can come back for years to come! Thanks so much for coming.

This past week we filled our camp with loud and enthusiastic girls from 8-17 for our first week of Girls Camp. I was amazed at how loud they were the first night at songfest. That noise didn't change all week as they continued to learn more and grow in their activity classes and through the time spent with their cabin in fellowship and bible study. Our CILT program; a leadership training program for high school girls, began simultaneously with Girls Camp, and the group of 9 CILT I's (in their 1st year) and 5 CILT II's (in their 2nd year) is filled with young woman who will hopefully soon be part of our staff. They worked hard all week to complete requirements and learn more about HFCC as a camp and ministry. Keep up the good work ladies!

Girls week 2 starts tomorrow, and we are excited to welcome more campers into our gates. Continue to pray for us this summer and that every camper will leave their week of camp having been impacted and grown in their love for Christ and others!

*note: pictures should be uploaded soon for Family Camp and Girls week 1. Check back soon!!

Father-Daughter Weekend

I apologize that we haven't posted anything since the beginning of the month! It's incredible how quickly these past few weeks have gone by in moving up to camp for the summer and getting ready for our season.

We ended our spring programs with a great Father/Daughter weekend June 5-7. The dads and the daughters enjoyed the "HIStory" theme we had for the weekend. It was a great weekend, especially with our brand new corn toss game. We had the 1st Annual Father/Daughter Corn Toss Round Robin Tournament (a very easy name!) and also had a blast at the dunes at Lumberman's monument. We'll post some pictures this weekend when we are in town and have a better internet connection!

Precamp Training and Horse Camp have started this week. The horses and horse campers are doing great, and we are excited for a full week of preparation for this summer season! We have a great group of staff this summer and can't wait to have more campers arrive. Continue to pray for this summer and safety!

Outdoor Education week!

This past week we had the opportunity to run an Outdoor Education program for the Northville Christian 6th grade class. Despite a little bit of rain, everyone had a blast! Volunteers and staff worked hard over our Memorial Day Work Weekend to get camp ready for the group to come, and it paid off!

Not only is our new fridge and freezer unit up and running in the Dining Hall, but the cabins were cleaned and prepped just in time for Northville Christian to arrive for their week at camp. Some other work we were able to accomplish during the work weekend included setting up our bike shelter, cleaning out the craft cabin, clearing away some of the fallen trees from the winter, and just a good general cleaning of our site. Now that's what I call spring cleaning!

We've enjoyed having Northville Christian come to do an Outdoor Education Program with us these past two years, and hope that we can continue to grow this program. Some of the activities the 6th graders were able to take part in included hiking to the beaver's dam and checking out the work the beavers (YES! We have beavers again!) have done this past year,

exploring our swamp, and using the Outer Limits course to do team building challenges and other initiatives. On their first night here, they had the chance to hike through the national forest to the AuSable River, and were able to visit the river again on Thursday at the dunes at Lumberman's Monument. They had a blast running down the dunes and the *cold* water didn't seem to bother them!!

Overall, it was a great week for NCS and they had a ton of fun! Hopefully we can run more programs like this in the future with additional schools! That's all for now, but check back soon as we are about to start our summer season and will have some great updates and photos to share! God Bless!

Welcome to the new HFCC blog! We hope this can be a place where the friends and family of HFCC can come and stay connected to camp! Our goal is to give parents, campers, and anyone else interested up-to-date information, events, activities of camp, as well as a weekly devotional! Also, we hope to be able to upload current camp photos from our programs throughout the year!

This past weekend we traveled up to camp, after what seemed to be a long yet very short winter! The winter season left us with a few downed trees, one that fell on our new cabin, Zuni, and another that fell on the slide in the Rec field. We're planning repairs already, and are grateful that there was only minimal damage while we were gone!

A group of men came up to lay the footer and pour our cement slab where in a few short weeks our new fridge/freezer unit will lay! Despite some (or lots) of rain and a few equipment issues, they were able to get the job done and were even able to tear out the old unit that was over 35 years old!

One of the other highlights of the weekend was being able to participate in the 10th Annual Oscoda Family Fun Fair put on by the Iosco County Family Coalition. It was our first time being a part of it, and we had a blast! Thanks to Ptarmi's parents, we had a new corn toss game for the kids to play...and they loved it! It was great to get connected to the community around camp, and we are praying that we can have a positive impact in that area.

Our new corn toss game!

Our display at the Oscoda Family Fun Fair

We look forward to returning to camp in a few weeks for the May 15th-17th work weekend. Continue to pray for the completion of our new fridge/freezer unit and the safety of our site. We'll upload some pictures in the next few days but we wanted to get this blog up and running! Thanks for stopping by!