Many Blessings at Camp Dixie

So just to set the stage for this post, I am sitting in the shade outside the house on the back cement slab. The weather is just about perfect (low 90's and the only clouds are those puffy ones that are lazily crossing the sky). This is what living in Southern Alabama is all about, as far as I can tell anyway.

It's a little bit different than what we get to put up with during June and July, our highest temp this summer was 102, with the humidity at about 99%, which put our heat index somewhere between 110 and the temperature on the surface of the planet Mercury. It's kind of fun making sure that the campers stay cool and hydrated. Sometime during the summer we decided to get some sprinklers, and set them up around camp during our games, so anyone who got too hot could run through the sprinkler and cool off. It worked, and we had a lot of fun with the sprinklers as well as with our games. I had no idea the sprinklers would be so fun, but as a Director, you learn more about what works and what doesn't every year. You also remember things that you had forgotten, like how much fun it is to run through a sprinkler as a child.

One thing that was a huge blessing for Camp Dixie this summer was our Traveling VBS Program. We ran this program for the third time this year, and were able to visit 7 congregations, as well as make a surprise appearance at an additional congregation to help them with a Day Camp program they were running in New Orleans. We received nothing but compliments about the program and the counselors, which speaks a lot to the people running the program (the counselors) and also to the need of congregations in the area to have a VBS team available. I wish there was a better way to measure the programs we run during the summer outside of sheer numbers, but other than surveys by the participants (which were very positive) I just don't know how to do that. The good thing is that the numbers are positive too, Summer Camp was within 6 campers of last summer (great considering the economy around these parts) and the Traveling VBS program had even more campers than we did last summer, and more than we had on-site this summer!

So I am almost done with the original planning process for next summer, the new website with all the dates for next summer is almost ready to be uploaded and become active. I can only pray that we have the opportunity to reach as many children next year as we did this year, and I hope we can find even more congregations to reach with Traveling VBS.

While I am thinking about blessings, and other thing that has been great for Camp Dixie has been our chicken dinners. If you've never been, we have 7 dinners during the year, and it is our major fundraiser for the Camp. This year has been amazing, we've averaged right around 600 people, in fact the last time we even ran out of chicken before the dinner was over. Thanks again to everyone who has been to a dinner this year, and if you haven't you should check them out, it's a tasty treat for a Sunday.

Well, I think that's about it for now, you can check for the website to be updated really soon, and I hope you are having a great after summer time.

See you at camp!

Mac

Remember how days used to take forever?

I finally believe something my mother told me when I was a child. She would tell me, in the middle of a particularly "long" day for me that as you get older, time will go by more quickly. I never believed her, the days always seemed to crawl by...

Not so anymore. I can't believe how fast this winter/spring/summer has gone by. Since my last blog entry a lot of things have been going on at Camp Dixie. Here's a quick rap-up, I will be blogging about them in the near future (I sure hope to anyway!)

1. In February we had a NLOMA conference in quite possibly the coldest and most remote place in the United States (Northern North Dakota, 8 miles from the Canadian border.) At that conference we got many of the applications for the summer counselors.
2. We hired 14 staff members for this summer. We were hiring right up until staff training started on May 22.
3. Kim and I took a quick trip to Las Vegas to see a concert and the Grand Canyon (first time for me.) What fun!
   
4. Lifeguard Training with the Camp Dixie staff!
5. Summer Camp and Traveling VBS! This summer we had 248 campers (just slightly down from 254 last summer) in our on-site program. Praise God!
6. Costa Rica Servant Event. 14 people traveled to Costa Rica to help Camp Penuel serve inner city Costa Rican children at their site. It was a great trip!
7. We moved and re-designed the "Raging River" challenge course element. For the first time in a long time, campers were experiencing a new Raging River.
   
8. Celebration Lutheran Church from Tallahassee Florida came to Camp Dixie for a Servant Event and helped us build a horizontal climbing wall.
9. Summer camp ended. One of the greatest staff groups ever departed Camp Dixie and went back to their homes all across the country. You guys are missed!
10. Retreat season has begun!

Well, those are just a few of the things that have happened in the time since I last wrote a blog entry. Hopefully many ideas for future blogs can come out of this.

Summer Camp is on its way!

It's hard to believe I just said that, but it's true. The calendar has turned to 2009, which means summer isn't all that far away. We've even sent out the first batch of brochures. Yup, that's right over 600 brochures were sent to former campers and their families just after the new year. If you haven't received yours yet, you can get more information at the Camp Dixie website. 

I thought I would tell everyone about a couple of changes that I am very excited about for the summer of 2009. First of all, if you have seen the summer camp materials or the website, you may have noticed that we have changed the age groupings for the summer camp programs. More specifically we have changed from grade level groupings (i.e. Conqueror camp is for 6-8th grade) to age level groupings (Conqueror camp is now available for campers aged 12-14.) This will hopefully alleviate some situations where friends wanted to be in the same camp, and were the same age, but were in different grades. It should also get rid of the problem where some campers were older than conqueror age (they were 14 and in 9th grade) but were not old enough to be a YLT yet.

We've also added a new program to encourage campers to bring friends that have never been to Camp Dixie before. If a camper brings a new camper to Camp Dixie, the person who invites the new camper will get $10 off their registration fee. If they bring two that's $20 off. (Sorry, the new camper will still have to pay the full fee.)  I am secretly hoping (can it be a secret if I just blogged about it?) that some camper out there will take the challenge and try to get free camp out of the deal. That means they would have to invite 18 new friends. Can you imagine how many people could be reached with the love of Jesus if everyone brought 18 friends? Amazing.

Finally, parents and campers in the 12-14 year old age group can look for a new cell phone policy to be in place this coming summer. I haven't worked out the complete details yet, but it looks like we will not have a complete ban on cell phones for this age group next summer. Check your registration confirmation information for the full policy.

Well that's it for now, I hope you are having a great week, and had a wonderful new year. Kim and I managed to head up to Minnesota for a couple of weeks over Christmas, but that's a whole nother post in itself.

See you at camp!

Mac

Where were you?

When I was growing up I would most often hear that question if I returned from someplace covered in something that shouldn't be on my clothes. Usually for me it was grass stains (we used to play a lot of football and soccer in my friend's backyard.) Sometimes and depending on the season, it could be mud, snow, sand, or even possibly some of my own blood. Like I said we liked to play football. Tackle football.

Sand is something that we see a lot here at Camp Dixie. Basically having all our land on a beach means that sand comes into the building an

d our house on almost every one's feet. If you have the right kind of shoes (mine are my new ones made by Reebok) they almost act like sand vacuums and you can have your own desert inside your house if you like!

Why am I asking where were you, and telling you about sand? Because since I last posted on the blog, Kim and I have been to a very sandy place. Egypt. I could probably talk for days about the interesting things that I saw there (we flew into Cairo, and the path to the runway leads right over the pyramids, and we traveled down the Nile river in a riverboat cruise.) But I thought I would share a couple of pictures, so you can see where we've been since I last posted.

Here is the obligatory picture of the one of the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. It was an amazing sight to actually be standing there and looking at those things. The pyramids are one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and the only one that still exists. Incidentally the pyramid 

behind the Sphinx here is the great Pyramid of Khufu which was built before the

 other two pyramids and the Sphinx. The Great Sphinx is commonly believed to have been built at the time of the second pyramid (built

 by Khufu's son, Khafra.) We were able to enter that pyramid when we were there (no cameras allowed). They only let 300 people each day into each pyramid so it was quite a rare treat. If you've never been in a pyramid before it's cramped, stuffy, and smells like the sweat of the 299 people that went in before you did. But it was 

amazing nonetheless.

We also went to

 visit many ancient Egyptian temples. Often we visited them very early in the morning (just as the sun was coming up) or late in the afternoon (as it was going

 down) to beat the heat. It made for some great pictures that way. This is a statue of Ramses the Great that was at one of the temples we visited. Ramses was a very interesting guy. He might have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus (there are about 5 or 6 that are suspects for that Pharaoh) and he ruled for a long time (he was alive until he was 90 or 91). He also liked himself a lot. He made many many statues of himself, and also put his cartouche (his royal name) on any piece of stone he could find. Interestingly enough, when he had his name carved into buildings that he had built during his reign, he had them carved in as deeply as possible. He didn't want a Pharaoh after him

 to renovate the building and take his name off. How did Ramses know this might happen? Because he did it to every temple that he renovated throughout his life.

Finally, the four statues that are in the last photo have as much to do with why Kim and I traveled to Egypt. I will never forget seeing this image in my 6th grade social studies text book. It is a picture of the temple of Ramses the great (here he is again) at Abu Simbel. The temple was actually carved right into the mountain, and there is actually a companion temple next to it for Ramses' wife. I remember seeing that picture and just being in awe of the whole idea of the Egyptians being able to carve that out of the mountain, and that it was lost to the desert sands for centuries. Here's what the area looked like just before it was excivated in the early 1800's. Amazing huh? Well. that's where we've been while we were away. It was an amazing trip

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Hurricane Ike is BIG!

Hey everyone, this is just a quick update to say hi and let you know what's going on at Camp Dixie. Right now we are feeling just a bit of Hurricane Ike. Hurricane Ike is large enough that we are even getting some of the storm surge here (and we are a long way from the Texas coast.) The tide is about 3-4 feet higher than normal, and it's been windy, which means waves over the seawall. Woo hoo. Here are a couple of pictures so you can see what it looks like. Just a note, the bottom picture is all water... Don't worry though, the weather is supposed to calm down, and we are still planning on having the chicken dinner on Sunday. See you then!

Three Kinds of Lies

Mark Twain (pictured on the left) popularized a saying by Benjamin Disraeli (he was a British statesman. Really I looked it up) about statistics. The quote goes like this: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, da**ed lies, and statistics. Well, Kim and I were talking about our busing plan from New Orleans to Camp Dixie (we really did do some work on it before last summer) and were wondering where most of Camp Dixie's summer campers come from. So, I sat down and looked at the registration information and came up with some statistics. I'm not really trying to say anything with them, so they probably aren't lying, so enjoy.

Did you know that the great state of Florida sends more people to Camp Dixie summer camp than any other? Yup, 39% of the campers that attend Camp Dixie Summer Camp come from Florida. The second most common state for people to come from during Camp Dixie Summer Camp with 28% of all campers is... (drum roll please) Camp Dixie's own... Alabama! Third on the list of states to send campers to Camp Dixie is... Louisiana with 23% of the campers. Now, you may be wondering where the last 10% come from? Well, that's a bit tricky (so we put them in the "other" category.) That category includes such great states as Tennessee, California, Maryland, and Georgia.

Well these numbers gave us a little better idea of where campers are coming from. And the busing idea, we're going to determine once and for all in the next couple of weeks if it is a possibility.

So there you go. Some statistics for fun.
See you at camp!
mac

How do you celebrate?

Summer camp ended just a couple of weeks ago, and though summer is probably the best time in outdoor ministry, it's also exciting to see it end. Finally all the planning and hard work that you've been working on for ten months is finally closed and you can look forward to the next summer.

We really did have a great summer. We had lots of amazing people working here, some great campers and a lot of fun times.

But, as the summer ended, I wanted to have a little bit of a celebration. Ever since Kim and I moved down here we saw the sign at the corner of highway 95 and 98. It says "Skydiving, Experience the thrill." The sign was a little beat up three years ago when we moved here, so you can imagine what it looks like now. When we first got down here we wondered if that place still existed. Our questions were answered the first time we went to the Blue Angels Homecoming Airshow. The first act that jumped in with the American Flag? You guessed it, the Emerald Coast Skydivers! So we knew the place existed, and actually had a pretty good reputation. They wouldn't let just anyone jump into that air show right?

So, for my celebration, how about a skydiving jump? Sounds good to me! Kim gave the place a call, and I was scheduled for a jump. We arrived at the airfield and got to watch a fun video that was starring the guy who created the tandem jumping equipment. Basically that means someone like me can go skydiving after only a few minutes of instruction, rather than the 6-8 hours of instruction that it used to take before they would let a newbie skydive. The video was awesome to watch, and what made it even more interesting was that the guy had a massive beard. That's a picture of him over to the right there. He's a genius, and has invented a ton of stuff for sport skydiving. They showed him jumping, and while he was jumping he had to have the beard tucked into his jump suit. Crazy huh? I don't know if we should tell him, but I think he might be compensating for the lack of hair on his head? Maybe?

Anyway enough about Bill Booth (that's his name.) So we took off in the Cessna 182 and headed up. We needed to get to 10,000 for the jump. Unfortunately a 182 isn't the fastest thing when trying to get altitude. In fact, it took almost 20 minutes to get up to the jump altitude. I got some beautiful views of the area however, and I can see why they call it the emerald coast. The water was beautiful and there sure is a lot of it. We flew right over camp, twice while getting up to 10,000'. Once we got there it was time to go. I got out the door, and the tandem master that was strapped to my back jumped out the door for us. We fell head first for a little while, then tipped back up to look at the plane flying away from us. Then we actually did a whole flip before getting into the "free fall position." The feeling was amazing. Terminal velocity for someone in that position is about 120 mph, so we were heading down at 120 miles an hour! Talk about noise!

All the noise ended when the chute opened. We slowed down to 14 mph and it's a kick in the crotch when that happens let me tell you. As we went down my tandem instructor showed me how flying the chute works, and how to flare the chute for landing. It's a crazy feeling, practicing the flare it felt like we completely stopped. Anyway, we spiraled a little bit to get down to the ground, and set up for our landing. Kim overheard the local skydiving crew sitting at the Drop Zone mentioning that the winds were pretty gusty, so they had a couple of guys help us out when we landed so we wouldn't get pulled by the parachute. We also "sat" the landing, with me landing on my butt instead of my feet, turns out that's more stable than trying to run the landing. I guess little kids have it right when the land on their backsides when they are learning to walk. Anyway we landed safely and it was an amazing experience.

I did learn a little bit about faith and trust during the jump. It's amazing the amount of faith and trust you put into people to help you. When I signed up for the jump I had to basically trust that the guy who packed the parachute did a good job, that the tandem master I was with knew what he was doing (he had over 1000 jumps to his credit so I wasn't too worried) and that the pilot who flew us up to 10,000' was having a good day. Incidentally as a side note, the pilot was wearing a chute too. He mentioned on the way up that he wished he could be jumping out with us, but someone had to get the plane on the ground for the next group. Funny.

So anyway, that's how I celebrated the end of the summer. It was a great way to end a great summer camp. Well, I think that's it for now. If you ever get the chance, go skydiving. It's amazing!