In the earlier years of my ministry I spent several summers
working with Christian camping programs.
My first camping experience was at Camp Sunset, which was located at
Fort Parker State Park between Mexia and Groesbeck, Texas. A lot of our life experiences were forged at
Camp Sunset. That’s where we first got
acquainted with Charles Williams. Out
of that experience came the plan to do “mission” work in Jamestown, New
York.
In many ways Charles is everything I’m not. He’s methodical, deliberate, well organized
and quiet. Sometimes I think I wake up
in a new world every day. I tend to
respond more to the situation at the moment.
I need better organizational skills and I’m anything but quiet. We ended up going with Charles and his wife
Joyce, Joyce’s brother – Jim Sheerer and his wife, Nona Sue to start the church
in Jamestown. Jim was probably somewhere
in the middle between Charles and me in terms of being outspoken. Often Jim and I would talk for a long time,
and Charles would never say a word. But
all the time, we knew he was analyzing every word we said. When he did speak it was a good idea to
listen.
While in New York, we helped start Camp Agape, which is
still in operation today. I’ve written
about that in a previous blog. When I
moved to Kansas City, I was asked to direct a camp session at Tonganoxie. After one year I stepped down. I was 34 years old, and the next oldest
staff member was 24. I remembered a
fellow at Camp Sunset, whom I considered to be something of a “stick-in-the-mud,”
because he often questioned some of the enthusiastic ideas being propagated by
those of us who were younger. At
Tonganoxie I felt myself thinking like him, so I decided it was time for me to
step aside from camp work and I didn’t plan on going there again. I retired from camp work at age 34.
That all changed when we moved to Iowa and I got involved
with Midwest Bible Camp. My children
were camp age and I began to see camp work in a different light. I’ll talk
about that in the next blog.
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