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