Dear all,
I find it quite ironic that I’m finally writing my “What I Did Last Summer” essay on the coldest, snowiest day we’ve had since moving here! Of course, if I had gotten this done sooner, I'd be looking for something else to do on a cold and snowy day, so I guess it's a good thing I waited.
Like everyone else, our summer was topsy-turvy. What we wanted to do when we wanted to do it was impossible. But God is sovereign and has a reason for everything, even if we don't understand it while it's happening.
This summer was like that in so many ways! Early in the year I wanted to concentrate on getting our St. Louis home ready for sale. Then, Covid craziness got ahold of everybody, no one knew how bad it would be, and there was even talk of shutting down the highways so as to keep it from spreading. I definitely didn't want to be stuck in St. Louis with the zombie apocalypse happening, while my family was in Ironton! So, I did what any responsible husband and parent would do, and returned home.
Schools were closed and that allowed our family to pour all of it’s efforts into Dayspring, doing lots of smaller projects to beautify the camp. (Thanks to all of you who donated to make that possible!) We did a near complete work over on cabin 8, cleaning it up and painting the inside, caulking the myriad of cracks that were letting insects in, painting the beds and putting a special painting on the deck to try to preserve it.
Someone wanted us to have new picnic tables, so they donated the money, and we purchased, assembled and stained them. We took a couple days to spruce up the Lester Collins memorial park at camp by cleaning up the weeds, planting some new bushes, and adding some new mulch. We took apart a lot of the rusty old bunk beds and gave them a new coat of paint. When we posted that on Facebook, many of you said “hey can you do that on the beds in my cabin if I send you some money?” So, we did. Not all of them are done, but at least we have a good start.
We also raised money to replace some of the old, worn out mattresses. Since Covid canceled Noreen’s trip to Angola prison for the “Returning Hearts” program, her contributors told her to put that money in the mattress fund as well. We’re a long way from replacing them all, but at least the staff and counselors will now have good mattresses to sleep on! They’ll also have A/C in some of the cabins! The Board had voted to air condition the cabins, if someone donated the units, and so far, four of them have been.
During this time, Rick Babb and John Witte were working on cabin 4, turning the inside of the old cabin into a modern room. It was studded out with metal studs, spray foam insulation was installed and fiberglass coated wallboard was put in for the interior wall. This ensures that in the future, should the cabin flood again, water will not damage any of their work. It was about this time that the bottom fell out.
It was decided that, due to the Covid pandemic, Dayspring would have no camps this year. In addition, the manager stated that we were broke and suggested that we sell the camp. This set off a long series of special board meetings and discussions, but it was ultimately decided that camp would not be sold. Of course, this did not occur until the January 2021 board meeting.
The immediate effects of that was that we would not spend any more money at Dayspring unless absolutely necessary and of course, word that the Camp might be sold caused donations to crater. This put us in quite the pickle! We had given up our home and career to come down here and minister to children at camp, and now we weren’t even sure we would have a camp to minister at. What was God doing to us? On top of all of this, several parents and counselors contacted us asking us to do something for the children this summer.
We contacted the leadership at our home church and informed them of the situation. They reminded us that there were several Christian camps in the area, and assured us that we had their support to work with them. We contacted the other camps in the area and asked if they would be open this summer. Two of them definitely would be and we asked to meet with their managers.
In the meantime, we got to work on what to do with the local kids. We talked to parents, counselors and others that had been involved with camp. We thought the best we could do would be a two-day day-camp at a local park. We thought that feeding them for two days and providing the other things we needed to make camp a success would be all we can afford. But ah! The best laid plans of mice and men! God had something better in store for us…..
We had our meeting with the manager of the first camp. While they would be having camps and were glad to have free workers, they only provided facilities and our interaction with the campers would be minimal. While that would certainly give us something to do this summer, it wouldn’t be optimal.
Next, we met with Larry, the manager at Camp Penuel. While many of their camps had been canceled due to the sponsors fear of Covid, they would be putting on several camps that year and we would be welcome to work with them and minister to the kids. When I told him what we were planning with the local kids, he said we should have it at Penuel, and for the whole week. “There’s no way we can afford that!” I told him. “Well,” he said, “there’s no cost. Penuel is a free camp.” OUCH! God just spanked me for putting Him in a box! Lesson learned!
We went to Penuel to do staff training with their staff and met some new forever friends. We got to know the layout of their camp and the way that they do things. We cleaned, painted, stocked the bathrooms and prepped for the incoming camps. Their normal crafts person would not be available this year, so Noreen recruited Kim Aguyo to come fill the position. The girls learned to do puppets for the evening chapel service. They quite enjoyed it and had a lot of fun performing the routines for the next few weeks.
The first camps were all kids who were in the Foster Care system. It included girls aged 7 to 17 and boys ages 7 to 11 on the first week. The next week we would see the boys ages 12 through 17. All of these kids were living in group homes, some as far as 2 hours away.
Getting to know these kids and hearing their stories was heartbreaking. Most of the kids are there through no fault of their own, often parents with drug problems which leads to neglect are the cause. Some have been subjected to horrific abuse, either physical, mental or even sexual. More than once we cried while listening to their stories. We knew that God had put them in our path that so that we could tell them that He has a better plan for them. What we didn’t know then was just how much He was going to get us involved with these kids, and with one in particular.
One day, at morning chapel, I had the ministry time. What I said must have struck a nerve, as several of the girls grabbed me during rec time and asked me to talk with them and pray with them. The next morning Noreen gave her testimony, and again the girls wanted to talk with her afterwards. We spent a lot more time crying, but we realized God was getting thru to both the campers and us! Thursday night at evening chapel is always Prayer Night at Penuel. Counselors are asked to stand up front, and anyone who wishes to can go ask them to pray with them. We were all loaded with kids to pray for, and again shed many tears.
The next week was the older boys. They were all trying to be macho, and I think they were a little more jaded than the girls, but many of them had an effect on us, and God had an effect on them as well. One in particular was Billy. If you’ve been reading my prayer requests, you already know about him. There are a lot more of them out there like him, and they all could use some godly Foster Parents. If you’d like to get involved just let us know.
After the boys, we were supposed to have a three-day weekend camp, but it got canceled at the last minute. That left us a few more days to get ready for the local camp. Noreen had done a great job of recruiting extra staffers for us. This camp would be larger than the others and would be a bit of a hybrid. We were going to be importing some of the elements of our Dayspring camp into the workings of Camp Penuel. In addition to Kim, Noreen convinced Steve and Jeanie West to come down and help out in the kitchen, Dustin to come as Sports Director, Patti to come counsel, and even got William to come up from Oklahoma to counsel for the week!
We got to see a lot of our old familiar campers, but also some new ones as well. While it wasn’t quite as big as our regular day-camps of years past, we still had a lot of kids there to hear the Gospel one more time.
All those Foster kids affected a lot more than just as. Two of the counselors at Camp Penuel decided that instead of going home they wanted to stay and work with the Foster Care homes. Both got hired and had to find places to stay until they could get situated. We offered to put up Miles, while “Tee” found a room with one of the local ladies from the church at Penuel. Both of them were young adults who had come to know the Lord from going to Penuel when they were younger. Neither of them had a car or license, so we did a lot of picking them up and dropping them off at a spot where a coworker could take them to work. We also worked with them to get their permits and driver’s license. I guess having a young man in the house for several months was God’s way of preparing us for Billy.
Since this more or less catches you up to where my eyeball issues erupted, I’ll stop for now as I have already been going on for three pages.
God bless each and every one of you, because without your prayers and support we wouldn’t be able to do any of this. Down below is a link to the staff video from camp Penuel. We hope you enjoy it.
Tim, Noreen, the girls, and Billy!
