Midway Through

It is the halfway point of the summer, and the days are flying by! Two remarkable camps that happen each year around this time challenge us to renew our focus for the rest of the summer.

The first camp group is the Riviera Baptist Church Youth Group. This year, twenty-five youth and adult counselors left the heat of Bullhead City to work and sweat in the cool pines instead! They have a number of projects on their list, including painting the Maintenance Shop and a portion of the Kitchen that we are remodeling as a part of the Dining Hall construction project. Both the Kitchen and the Dining Hall will match – a minor miracle in the camping world! The Riviera group always does an impressive amount of work during their visit to camp, and inspires us with their energy.

The second camp is our annual Angel Tree camp ministry, a program where we partner with Calvary Chapel in Phoenix to give the children of inmates a chance to go to camp. As you may already know, the Angel Tree program is a part of Prison Fellowship’s ministry. This program connects the families of inmates with churches who can help them. Dan and Susan Olney, the faithful leaders of the camping program at Calvary, say that the ultimate goal of the program is reconciliation – reconciling the inmates to Christ and the families to each other upon the inmate’s release.

Angel Tree camper Chyann with her new friends

Prescott Pines has the honor of having 46 Angel Tree campers with us this week, supporting Calvary Chapel’s valuable ministry. In many ways, this is the most difficult week of the summer. These kids are some of the toughest, neediest kids we will encounter all season long. However, in many ways, this is the best week of the summer. There are always a number of salvation decisions, and that is just the encouragement we need to keep on serving.

As we enter the second half of our summer, please pray for our staff and campers to remain healthy and uninjured. A few bumps and bruises are inevitable during the course of a summer, and we are grateful that we have not had any significant injuries thus far. However, some of the summer staffers are starting to get sore throats and we do not want illnesses to develop that would take our staff away from the ministry opportunities before them. Thank you for your prayers!