Our junior high winter blast is such a fun camp!

The shouts and laughter of forty campers and their accompanying counselors filled the air. They even made the lodge tremble with their energetic singing and hand motions.

This year, our speaker was the one and only Wiggin!

Wiggin was a camper here at Camas Meadows back when Scruffy and I were . . . much younger. Then he became a camp counselor and finally a youth pastor and camp speaker!

Wiggin spoke about the gospel being good news.

He mentioned how sometimes the gospel doesn’t seem like good news, even though that is what the word gospel means.

Sometimes kids are dealing with some serious church hurt. Maybe their family had a dispute with a local church, fell through the cracks and had real needs ignored, experienced the horror of a church leader who betrayed their trust, or watched the Christians around them treat others in ways that Christ would never have praised.

But while Wiggin was honest and serious about the hard things kids have lived and seen, he assured them that the gospel really is good news.

Wiggin shared about the origin of the word gospel. How it came from ancient military clashes where the townsfolk were waiting for the messenger who would run back from the battle to let them know if their army won the day or had been defeated. Gospel, good news, was a message of victory for the worried people who waited.

And that wraps up this sneak peek of life at our Junior High Winter Blast this winter. For the rest of the story, please visit The Campfire Blog!

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Come one, come all! It is time for senior high teen camp! This year’s theme: Monster Hunter! These brave campers are giving gentle pats to Scruffy and Boo Boo’s Newfoundland puppy, Nessie Karu–the puddle monster. While she is of course adorable, Nessie has very sharp teeth and seems to grow bigger every day. But there are monsters even more formidable than Nessie with her puppy teeth and whirling destructo-tail!

The theme verse for this week of camp was 1 John 3:8b–“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

Yes, my friends, monsters are real.

During Monday’s chapel, Van Helsing spoke about the deadly and dangerous monster of pride!

There are a whole lot of stories in the Bible about pride. A plethora of cautionary tales. One that stands out for me comes from the reign of Hezekiah, one of Judah’s most godly kings.

 “In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, who answered him and gave him a miraculous sign. But Hezekiah’s heart was proud and he did not respond to the kindness shown him; . . .” 2 Chronicles 32:24-25a

For almost his entire life, Hezikiah served the Lord fearlessly. He stood up to the mighty king of Assyria, even when Jerusalem was surrounded by armies. He repaired the temple, destroyed idols that had been set up to other gods, and celebrated Passover for the first time in many many years. He watched God do the impossible to save Jerusalem from Sennacherib’s invading army. And yet . . . pride was the monster that put a stain on his bright and shiny reign as King.

When God informed Hezekiah that he was about to die, he wept bitterly and asked for a miracle. God relented and the king was healed. In Isaiah 38 Hezekiah even writes a praise song to the Lord about how “Now I will walk humbly throughout my years because of this anguish I have felt.” Well, Hezikiah’s healing caught the interest of the Babylonian king who sent an envoy to Hezikiah with “best wishes and a gift.”

And that wraps up this sneak peek of life at our Senior High Teen Camp this summer. For the rest of the story, please visit The Campfire Blog!

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 In the heat of late July and early August, amidst record numbers of yellow jackets for the state of Washington, a herd of wonderfully rambunctious junior high campers tumbled into camp.

It truly was a herd!

Between staff and campers, the kitchen fed 95 people this week!

And along with those rowdy kids, Pyro, tumbled into being our camp speaker.

You see, Scruffy thought he had the Middle School Camp 2 speaker all covered, but at the last minute, the plan fell through. Pyro, a long-time camp friend and one of our board members, heard that Scruff was madly scrambling for a new speaker and offered to help out.

This week, he spoke on the life of David.

How David, as the chosen king of united Israel and Judah, was supposed to point ahead toward the coming Messiah. Pyro also spoke of David’s incredible failures and a life filled with war and bloodshed, so much bloodshed that he was not allowed to build God’s temple. However, God still used David. Even with all of his flaws, David’s life and reign did indeed point forward to a completely different kind of King.

And that wraps up this sneak peek of life at our Middle School Camp 2 this summer. For the rest of the story, please visit The Campfire Blog!

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Junior B Camp started out bright and sunny with a game in the meadow as campers and counselors met, moved into their cabins, and began a week of summer adventures together.

One of the special elements of this week was the fact that our speaker (camp name Phoenix) had experienced this exact moment herself way back when she was a camper attending Camas Meadows for the first time.

Phoenix went on to become a camp counselor herself, where she got her awesome camp name. She now has a little one of her own and she and her husband work for the Moody Aviation School. So much life has happened since she was last here serving at Camas Meadows. It was so exciting to have Pheonix back in the role of camp speaker.

Monday’s chapel was titled “Who Am I?–Knowing Our Identity”, and Pheonix spoke on knowing our identity.

“Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” Psalm 100:3

The little people in our lives face so much pressure. Everyone wants them to achieve great things: in sports, at math competitions, getting a solo in band, being a drama star, knowing exactly who they are right now and striving for their goals with gusto . . .

Both grownups and children alike, often forget something vital about our identity.

We can rest in an awesome knowledge that is mind-boggling and beautiful. We were made in the image of God and He longs for us to choose Him and to be His very own.

And that wraps up this sneak peek of life at our Junior B Camp this summer. For the rest of the story, please visit The Campfire Blog!

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We had a rough weekend leading into Middle School Camp 1. Good friends stayed at camp as they set up a memorial cross for their daughter by the campfire where she spent so many summer evenings.

She had been a camper, counselor, and camp intern and when she lost her battle with depression it broke us in ways we can’t fully express or understand.

Scruff had also asked one of our former staff if he would help us fall some trees around the camp to make the area safer. With the pine beetles sweeping through our local forest, dead trees are increasing.

As the grieving family of this dear young woman put up a handcrafted cross in a grove of aspen near the meadow, this young man cut down pine trees. He had just heard about the death of a close friend, once again a young person who lost their battle with depression. All three were in the same graduating class from the same high school and now two were gone.

I was one of that young man’s AWANA leaders and remembered him as a pesky and vibrant kid who was so fun and bright-eyed and made sure there was always a lot of action in the room so the leaders wouldn’t get lazy!

It was a lot. Missing a staff member who had been one of our camp daughters, hearing about this second death, watching others in their grief, grieving again ourselves.

It begins to feel hopeless. When you have answered the call to ministry and poured out yourself to the best of your ability and walked forward knowing that your heart would break, but despite it all, to lose the precious young ones you tried to love. These are dark moments.

What do you do when you point the way to Jesus again and again, and some are still lost? What do you do when your loved one finds Jesus, but then they are lost to you in a different and terrible way?

I know the answer just like you do. You keep pressing on. God is still there. The darkness won’t win. Oh, I know it’s all true. But it doesn’t feel like enough when the one you loved is gone.

Then Spiro, our speaker for Middle School 1, told her story.

And that wraps up this sneak peek of life at our Junior A Camp this summer. For the rest of the story, please visit The Campfire Blog!

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Come and join me over at The Campfire Blog as I record the ups and downs of this crazy thing called camp ministry. This week: Junior High Winter Blast!

Here’s a sneak peek … .

Junior High Winter Blast is one of our favorites here at Camas Meadows.

This is such a fun age-group to host.

Junior high campers have the incredible energy and capacity for adventure of children.

But their thought processes are maturing and they are able to hold deep conversations about life, the Bible, God, and of course snow ducks!

Or rubber duckies, depending what kind of duck is available.

This camper brought ducks with her this year because … ducks! Later, her cabin was delighted when Boo Boo found a snow duck maker and gifted it to them. More about that later.

But as was mentioned earlier, ducks are only one of the topics that junior high campers can wax eloquent about! Here, the campers worship God together with song. It was so delightful to have a quick visit from Choco and Partake as well as the joy of listening to Choco lead us in worship again. These kids know how to sing and they rattled the lodge with their voices. So lovely!

OK, folks. End of Boo Boo’s official camp blog teaser! Please zip on over to The Campfire Blog to enjoy the rest of our adventures!!!

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God has given me specific instructions only a handful of times. But when He urged Scruffy and I to work at Camas Meadows Bible Camp, It was very clear. He seems to leave a lot of decisions up to us, expecting us to use the good brains He gave us. But this huge life choice, living and working off-grid on a mountain meadow in order to provide an amazing camp experience for the children who are campers here, this was something He asked of us specifically.

However, as most worthy things are, living and working here has not proved to be an easy task.

Right before Christmas, December 22nd to be precise, every vital mechanical item at the camp was in good working order. Well, every item except our house generator which had recently quit charging the batteries at our home. But since the camp generator will charge our batteries when it is running, we could wait until after Christmas to get it fixed. Bomber, our camp maintenance person, breathed a sigh of relief as she prepared to travel off the hill and visit family for Christmas. Was everything ready for the camp coming the day after Christmas? It appeared to be. With her car packed, she rushed over to the generator which provides our power. A check engine light? Quickly, she shot Scruffy a text about it before jumping into her car lest she be late for their family Christmas celebration.

That warning light soon evolved into a baffling oil leak on our brand-new generator. Scruffy battled the oil leak and eventually saw victory, only to have a hydraulic hose break on the plow on the camp truck. This happened in Bomber’s driveway and to prevent her from thinking a murder had occurred in front of her house, Scruff texted her these photos … with no explanation. Which totally didn’t make her think he’d been horribly maimed on the job or anything.

Yes, Scruffy does have a history of experiencing a wide variety of injuries. From falling through a doorway on a ladder to blinding himself with a paint gun full of tinted log oil, his maintenance experiences have been exciting.

After sternly demanding a status update from Scruff about whether that was indeed blood, Bomber then went on to enjoy Christmas … and get a terrible week-long flu. Scruff fixed the snow plow on Christmas Eve. Then Scruffy and I enjoyed a delightful Christmas day where Scruff took the entire day off to be home with our boys. However, on the day after Christmas he went into the lodge to discover that a good portion of the dinning room was full of water! A pipe had broken during our very cold stretch (the neighbors recorded a low of twenty-two degrees below zero) and then began to leak when it warmed up. That, combined with freezing rain and the passes being closed led us to postpone Summer Staff Winter Retreat until December 27th.

Somewhere during that time, there was also a leak in the lodge roof from when the sliding ice pulled up a segment of the tin near the kitchen chimney. This caused water to leak into the kitchen and one of our camp ovens.

And so, with the mountain passes newly opened and the roads slick but passable, we began Summer Staff Winter Retreat!

As the campers arrived, Ragnar began preparing meals only to discover that both the classic oven and the convection oven were acting wonky. The pilot kept going out in the classic oven and the convection oven simply would not heat properly. After wrestling with the pilot, Ragnar finally kept it lit and the campers and staff enjoyed delicious meals and fellowship around the table. Apparently, the remnants of the roof leak were making the pilot light struggle, but once everything was dry, that oven at least, worked well.

Bomber returned, but was terribly ill and had to confine herself to quarters since no one else wanted to become terribly ill. Also, we are not sure that she was able to even move if she had wanted to. Even her cats had trouble rousing her from her illness-induced slumber.

Then, part way through the camp, the power down at our house quit. The next day, as the campers were leaving, the power at the camp quit. Still exhausted from having been so ill, Bomber crept out of her house to investigate. As the day wore on, she sorted through mechanical and electrical thingamabobs (this is the proper term for maintenance things I do not understand) looking for the problem.

Scruff tried to contact diesel mechanics and electricians willing to venture into the mountains, they are few and far between and none could be found who would arrive before the next weekend’s camp.

Finally, at about the point where I knew stuff in our freezer at home was in danger of being ruined, Bomber discovered a melted wire. Even though it was late, it wasn’t so late that the hardware store had closed. So she jumped into her care and headed down the hill in search of the electrical items needed for a fix.

That night, the power was back on and all was well … until something happened to the camp well!

Making all … not well, especially the well.

Water pressure was getting low, but when they hiked up the hill to run the small generator which would run the pump to fill up the holding tank and give us water, well … the pump didn’t work. Thus, after the thrill of finally having power again, we all experienced the plummeting feeling of realizing that there was no water.

Princess Leia Freyja was especially perturbed by a lack of water as she loves her fresh drinks (in a people mug only) and hates having slobbery water. We were using gallons of store bought water and pitchers of water we filled before it all ran out to drink, cook, water the dog, and flush the toilets. The boys missed their before school showers for two days and all of us were starting to feel pretty desperate. Without water, we were on the threshold of having to cancel the rental group that was scheduled to arrive that weekend.

Bomber spent all day Wednesday researching pump issues, making calls, staring at strange wires, and perhaps pulling out her hair. Finally, late in the evening, she got a promising phone call and headed back up the hill to the pump. At 10:30 that night, a gurgle sounded in one of our faucets causing me to dare to hope. Then Bomber marched through our doorway, a gleam of triumph in her eye. The pump was working! Later the next day she figured out the issue with the convection oven. It had been having problems at the same time as the power system. With a new wire installed, the convection oven started working again as well!

Madness, those two weeks were utter madness. With eight mechanical crises, that averages out to a crisis every other day. And yet, as we welcomed campers into the lodge during Summer Staff Winter Retreat it just felt so right. This was exactly what we were called to do. God’s plan, it was good. So good to see teens laughing, searching the scriptures, praying together, making friends, learning to trust God just a little bit more. And then as Scruffy welcomed the rental group into camp, helping them get their cars out of the ditch and showing them where to put their things, the rightness of this “simple” act of hospitality outshone the wrongness of the broken water pump, generators, snow plow, roof, pipe, and all of the many things that we must battle in order to live and work on this lovely mountain meadow.

So, are we called to a life of insanity? Yes, yes we are. That’s OK, because we are right where God wants us. We are in the front row, ready to see His glory up close and personal as He walks with us while things break and fixes seem impossible and campers lives are grown and changed all the same.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

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The Summer Staff Winter Retreat is one of our very favorite Camas-run camps!

Scruffy started this camp in 1999 and over the years we have seen so many staff and potential staff form strong bonds of friendship and grow in their relationships with the Lord as they get the chance to be campers!

Yes, our counselors and the support staff that keep camp running behind the scenes work incredibly hard. This camp is their chance to be campers and to just enjoy being together as friends after a long summer of focusing on work and ministry.

Read the rest of the story over at The Campfire Blog!

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What do a camper’s grubby feet have to do with being an action hero? Those who attended chapel at Senior High Teen Camp know. But for those who didn’t, there is still hope, if you keep reading you too can discover the answer to this vital question.

Behold, in all their glory, a camper’s feet. This particular camper won fame or at the very least notoriety, for being able to contort her feet in this amazing manner. She also chased down hapless bystanders with these dusty toes. Some were impressed, some were horrified, all were amazed. I was so amazed that I snapped this photograph to save the camper’s talent for posterity. At the time, I did not realize that this picture and these feet would play a vital role in telling the story of Senior High Teen Camp.

Van Helsing’s theme for the chapel sessions this week was The Action. His theme verse for day one, James 2:17–“In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

Of course, such a theme demanded watching some film clips that featured explosions, taking a quiz concerning the many action hero idiosyncrasies including why they are inclined to hold a pistol sideways (the bullets hurt more!), and holding a contest where campers and staff competed at holding the best action hero pose!

What? These things don’t seem very . . . Biblical? Stick around and I’ll share one of the great mysteries of camp ministry. Some things may look less heroic the more you investigate, like actors and/or campers posing in front of a flaming backdrop in full costume.

However, there are some things that seem less impressive initially, but suddenly grow amazing when you see the whole picture.

Camp chapel sessions may appear rowdy and haphazard at first glance. Give them time. Stay for the whole week. You won’t be disappointed with the things God can do with a handful of props, a flaming backdrop, and a few good workers intent in investing deeply in the lives of teens.

OK, folks. For the full story, come and join me over at The Campfire Blog!

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This week of camp held many unexpected twists and turns as well as surprising moments of beauty. Much like this rare flower blooming right beside the dusty path down to the meadow. It is a protected flower, a biologist comes to count them every few years. Yet this one is thriving, out in the open, right beside the path that we walk every day. While this type of flower may be in danger, this particular blossom is relentless as it grows and blooms in such a rowdy location. It is ironic that one of my favorite photos from this week would so aptly illustrate our theme.

All three of our interns were required to work as camp counselors this week, leaving Scruffy and Bomber working to run the program and lead the support staff team along with their normal jobs. The interns both managed their cabins and helped those who had stepped in to take over their areas of expertise. Our camp nurse Trauma Trooper was suffering from back pain, therefore Mama Smurf assisted her as she cared for our campers and their various bumps and bruises. Phew! So many things ended up differently than our best laid plans.

Also, our camp speaker was unable to attend due to illness. Therefore, Scruffy needed to speak! During staff meeting on Monday, he gathered three different hats/wigs from the skit box. Scruff wore a different one as he led each of the different parts of the meeting as director, the program director, then speaker. Scruff brushed off a week’s worth of sessions that he taught for a rental group back in 2018 and we gathered as a staff to pray for extra strength and do what we were called to do, summer camp!

To read the rest of the story, please visit my post over at The Campfire Blog!

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