Eleven

Two things came to my mind yesterday when I thought of the number eleven.  First I'm reminded of our good friend Fritzi who was part of our first group of German volunteers back in 2012 - the same year I started here at Camp Evergreen.  We were at a fundraiser in Edmonton (Lendrum) and were heading back to camp late at night.  In need of a snack to help keep us awake at night we stopped at the 7-11 just before exiting the city.  Fritzi was having a hard time deciding what to buy (which if I remember was a regular occurrence!) when I suggested she try a slurpee even though it was quite cold outside.

As she was browsing through the cup sizes, one of the cups had a movie theme on it.  With the movie cup in her hand she realized that this was way too scary of a cup to drink out of, and in replacing the cup back on the stack, knocked a whole wack of cups (a wack is equal too or greater than 4 stacks of cups) behind the slurpee machine.  Fritzi was very apologetic at the counter and that's how we came to calling her Jessica Seven-Eleven Fritzi!  Fritzi ended up coming back a second time to volunteer here at Evergreen and I would like to say thanks again Fritzi, you are welcome back anytime!

Our German connection has become very important to helping us in our ministry.  I think that it is safe to say that without their help over the past six years we wouldn't have been able to serve as many guests and campers as we have.  Claudia arrived this week from Neu-Ulm and is now German number 34!

The other reason I'm thinking of eleven is because when I started this blog we were eleven campers short of our total last summer.  This morning that number eleven dropped to six.  We are 162 campers ahead of last year at this time.  21 of our 28 camps are full.  We recently tweaked a couple of our camps in an effort to create more room for campers.

We are fielding calls every day from parents who are hoping that our web site is wrong, that we're not full and there is room for their child.  I was in the dining room yesterday when Josh was inviting the St. Alphonsus students at the end of their band camp back in summer.  Unfortunately there were very few spots open in their age group.

That is why we are Reaching Higher - to create more room and expand our ministry.  The board will be meeting this Saturday with the only agenda item being Reaching Higher.  We need to grasp the urgency, we need to realize the potential and we need to make a pledge!

And what about the blog word of the week?  St. Alphonsus band left one of their mallets here at camp simply because some of the students couldn't get enough of our dogs.  Sometimes I'm still surprised at how much they are loved.  As the bus was about to leave a couple of boys came into the Welcome Centre to say good-bye - to the dogs - not me!  And they forgot their drum mallet.  I'm glad the dogs are helping us give our guests and campers a great experience, but there must be some way to send the mallet back home with one of the dogs...

Thanks for your support.

Bob "Ranger" Kroeker
Executive Director