It Happened Again!

Well it happened again.  One of our student guests came with his band camp in March of this year, had a great experience with our staff, and went home very excited about Camp Evergreen.  His parents caught his excitement and registered their family for Family Camp - only to find out that Family Camp is full.  (Remember our first Family Camp filled in less than an hour after registration opened!)  This family is now 7th on the waiting list and hopefully there is enough movement on the list that we can get them in.

This challenge is not new to us.  We are entering our very busy spring season next week.  From Tuesday until the end of June (actually till the end of October) we will have a guest group on site every day.  Many of our student guests will have the same great experience this young man had.  They will bond with our staff, (we have a great staff!) and will go home excited about Evergreen.  However, when they try to register for summer camp it will be full.  As of writing this blog we are 132 campers ahead of last year at this time.  16 of our camps are full.  We have made some adjustments to ages and camps in an effort to squeeze a few more campers in this summer.  And yet, we have been turning children away as early as January.

Between now and the end of June we will see approximately 1,500 guests, the majority of which are camper age.  We will be turning campers away for the next two months.

That is why we are Reaching Higher.  The board has recently talked about increasing our ministry capacity by 50% in 5 years.  That is an aggressive goal.  But the reason is as simple as it is clear - we want to see more children have a life changing experience here at Evergreen.  Pray for us as we work hard to accomplish that goal.

With all our guests and campers we are still looking for a few more spring staff and summer volunteers.  The spring staff positions are paid positions and you can contact Lane for more information.  staff@camp-evergreen.com

In summer we're looking for adult volunteers to spend a week in the (fun) kitchen.  And if you're 16 years or older and love working with children, we need you to volunteer for a week or six!  Again, please contact Lane for more information.

And what about that blog word of the week?  Some of you are thinking, "How is Ranger going to tie hatchet into Reaching Higher?"  Sometimes I wonder the same thing myself.  Well, this weekend is our Ladies Retreat.  There will be lots of ladies.  (read LOTS of ladies!)  The small lodge reno was finished just in time.  We have a coffee plan ready to kick in, (did you catch the pun?) and it looks like we will huck some boots again.

New for this year...well you will just have to wait to find out about the hatchet.  But I can say with great confidence, there is a hatchet somewhere in Ladies Retreat 2018!

Thanks for your continued support.

Bob "Ranger" Kroeker
Executive Director

N x W

New for us this year was having our sister camp - Redberry Bible Camp - join us for most of our spring training week.  Redberry is located about an hour north of Saskatoon and about seven hours from Evergreen.  It was a lot of fun playing, worshiping and learning together.  We spent about a third of our time together and it was great sharing new ideas.

The GPS coordinates to get you not only to Camp Evergreen but more specifically the front porch of Moose Junction are N51`40'49" by W114`37'31".  Moose Junction is our General Store and if you haven't been inside - you should put that on the bucket list.  We're always very excited when our new clothing arrives.  A big thanks to Rolf for getting up early this morning to go pick up the pallet piled high with boxes!  (I wish I had a picture because he brought them to the store with the Skidsteer.)  We also got a brand new hanger organizer for those clothes.  I was "reaching" for a way to tie the organizer to Reaching Higher - but I'll admit I was stumped!

The staff are very excited about the red plaid shirts.  Our camper T-shirts have arrived as well and if you haven't heard, each of our summer campers will get a T-shirt this year.  It's a good thing we bought a lot of T-shirts because we reached a milestone today.  854 campers are currently registered for summer camp.  Why is that a milestone?  Our total number of summer campers for last year was 854!  If we add our family camp numbers we are currently about 975.  How cool is that!  (very cool)

Are we ready for summer?  Not quite.  We would really like six more (18+) male cabin leaders.  One would think that out of an Alberta population of 4 million people, and let's say half are guys, we should be able to find six solid men!  If you can't give us the entire summer consider a week or two.

A big thanks to our friends Bob and David for delivering our Gator back this week.  A group from Lendrum church not only donated the cost of a new engine, but installed it as well.  Our program staff started using it the day it arrived.

I was blessed to have several very (very) encouraging conversations with seasonal staff today which reminded me again why we are here and why we do what we do.  It's been a very busy couple of weeks for me and if you were to see my desk you would think either I'm very busy or very messy.  (It's most likely a bit of both - just ask Bev about my side of the bed.)  It was very uplifting for me to pause in the middle of my  "to do" list and just listen to my staff.  The conversations were deep and meaningful.  They shared different, and yet similar stories about how camp is changing their lives.  As we continue to reach higher, I'm very (very) excited about all the ministry that we can be part of!

Thanks for your continued support.

Bob "Ranger" Kroeker