Looking at the latest post on this blog prior to today, I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. Ah, those were good times when we were waiting to get the floors finished.
Since then, a lot has happened here at Camp Dixie, so I thought a photo montage was in order to show what has happened.
First of all we have finally finished this wave of floor improvements. New tile has been laid in the Kitchen, Dining Hall, front Bathrooms and the two front storage rooms in the main building. We've also fixed all the light fixtures so that they are all lighting up now. It makes the inside of the building look like a million bucks. Well about $7000 anyway.
Here's a picture of the Dinin
g Hall with its new tiles.
Since we last chatted we also had a NLOMA Conference in Arizona. At this conference all the camp directors in the nation get together and talk about important issues facing outdoors ministry. We also use this time for our Joint Recruitment process for summer staff hiring. I also took an extra day and headed to Tuscon to visit the Pima Air and Space museum and the Titan Missile Museum. It's pretty fun stuff, the Air Museum had more military planes than I have ever seen in one place, and at the Missile Museum I literally got to walk into a cold war missile silo.
Here's a picture of one of the more interesting planes at the Pima Museum (a NASA super guppy that helped move rocket parts during the start of the shuttle program) and a look down into the Titan II Missile silo. Just as a note, the sides and bottom of the silo were made of concrete eight feet thick, and it had no seams in it anywhere.
The beginning of March saw the return of the Blue Angels (always a sign that summer is coming) to Pensacola Naval Air Station, a visit by Kim's family, and this year it brought one of the earliest possible Easters. The Easter sunrise service at Camp Dixie, which is an annual tradition for St. Mark's Lutheran Church of Elberta, AL, actually had a sunrise during the service. We were actually singing a song, and just as we started the last verse, the sun started to peek over the Florida side of Perdido Bay.
Here are a couple of pictures of the 2008 Blue Angels team. I didn't get any pictures of the sunrise during the worship service, I thought it might be best to pay attention to the service as much as possible.

Throughout the past couple of months we have been going through the hiring process for summer staff. We are planning on hiring 14 or 15 counselors this summer, and we currently have 11 of those positions filled, so we are well on our way. Once again we have great people coming from all over the country, from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas, and as close as Southern Mississippi.
In April, I've been working on getting summer camp registrations processed, as well as getting ready for summer camp. I was however able to take some time to head to an airshow near Panama City at Tyndall AFB with FTP from the past two summers at Camp Dixie (better make that three, he is working here this summer too. The Thunderbirds were headlining (ask me sometime who I think is best after seeing the Blue Angels a lot, and the Thunderbirds twice in my life.) But the best part is where we sat. We sat to the right of show center a little ways, and as we were sitting there, four F-15's taxied right in front of us and sat there for their part of the show which was coming up. So for about 10 minutes we were 20 feet away from some very powerful, very loud fighters. The best part however was as they turned onto the taxiway in front of us, the pilot decided to give the throttles a little kick, and we got to enjoy the rear end of two F-15 engines at what I am sure was just a bit above idle speed. The resulting wind blew over the trash barrel next to us (which had a very large sandbag in the bottom holding it in place), it blew FTP's hat off his head and about 10 yards away in an instant, and i'm pretty sure it embedded some pieces of dust into my legs that won't be coming out for a while. All in all it was a fun weekend.


Well that's about it for now, this past weekend we had a great group from Slidell, LA. We had some fun doing challenge course with them (I've never actually made everyone in a group not be allowed to talk before.) And we even tried some fishing, but after having our bait stolen numerous times by fish that were too small to even be hooked by our hooks, we decided to quit that little excursion.
And today it's windy. Warm, but cloudy and windy.








