Across the Miles: Camp Forest Springs Part 1

Saturday, June 28 - Saturday, July 5

Every 2 years, Danny receives an amazing opportunity to speak for one of the jr. high weeks at Camp Forest Springs in Westboro, Wisconsin. There are several perks to this arrangement:

1. The camp is absolutely beautiful (see pix below), and very kid/family friendly.
2. No cooking for a week!! We ate in the cafeteria, which serves remarkably good meals for a camp.
3. Danny gets to do something he loves - teaching God's Word and connecting with students, counselors and other staff. He taught 10 times throughout the week, beginning Sunday evening and ending Saturday morning.
4. We get to spend time with friends - Matt & Tarah Hoffland and their 4 kids - throughout the week, as well as meeting new friends. Many of these were families and couples at the camp taking classes and training for future camp ministry.

A HUGE praise for me - they put us up in one of the student apartments, with a kitchen, living room and 2 bedrooms!! Everyone had a bed or mattress to sleep in, and we were able to set up Malachi's pac-n-play in the walk-in closet. Behind the apartment building is a playground, on which the kiddos spent many happy hours.

Our first time as a family at CFS was 5 years ago, when Rachel was 10 months old. We went again 2 years ago, when Karis was 10 months. This time, with Malachi being 9 months and having three others . . . I have to be honest - it was fun, and even rejuvenating, but definitely not very relaxing! The first 2 days were downright miserable. Have you ever wondered if your kids were under demonic influence (I'm only half kidding)? They whined, and fought, and cried, and did everything in their power to make life as difficult as possible. And Malachi, who has always been somewhat of a puker, got even worse. He threw up after every meal - usually all over me, himself, his high chair and / or whatever surface happened to be near. By Tuesday morning, I literally came back from breakfast, put them all to bed, threw myself down on the floor of the apartment and cried out to God for help. There was no way to tell whether this was all due to lack of sleep, change of schedule, spiritual warfare, or all of the above.

That day was a turning point. I think we all started getting into the swing of things: Danny had been spending the mornings preparing for upcoming sessions and getting other church-related work done, and then speaking. He finally saw what a mess I was, took pity on me, and spent the next few mornings with us, which helped a great deal. Plus, the kids started sleeping better. So, from then on the week was a blast. I even took the kiddos to a few sessions, until Malachi crawled under a girl's seat and started tearing pages out of her notebook and eating them.

I'm always proud of Danny at things like this. It was quite stretching for him to speak for 150-200 jr. high students; he felt out of practice after not having spoken to this age group for nearly 2 years. But he did an amazing job. He spoke on doing everything for God's glory, and it got pretty deep sometimes, but the counselors reported that it allowed them to have some surprisingly good conversations with their campers. And the campers seemed to be following right along and tracking with him, and asking some great questions. so that was encouraging.

Once again, there's way too much to write, so I'll post next time on all the cool stuff the kids - and Danny and I - got to do during the week. For now, here's some more pictures.

On our way from the apartment down to dinner. Normally Rach & Zekers walked, Malachi rode in the jogging stroller and Kari Bou sat in the backpack.
Snozzle, the camp's celebrity puppet. During junior camp, and for the first 2 days of jr. high camp, John & Diane Windle do puppets during the sessions. During the remaining days of jr. high camp, Matt leads worship.
The cafeteria
View of the lake from Pine Point
I lost my camera for 2 days, so I didn't get any pix of our family at the waterfront, but this is what it looks like in the early morning, before the day's activities.
The camp speaker in action
The sky was brilliant blue all week with fluffy clouds and clear, clean, crisp air. Aaahhhh . . .
The building where we stayed had 10 apartments, a lounge and a laundry facility (yea!)
One last family picture overlooking the lake