The Great Family Adventure Weekend

Hey Everybody! I am back again, writing my columns. Only this time, it’s in a new format. It’s something called a BLOG. The interesting thing about a BLOG is for those of you who take time to read “Rick’s Corner,” you can now respond to my columns. If you do, be kind. My whole purpose of these columns, is to provide a little inspiration and insight into what our camp is all about.

We are off and running in our preparations for 2006. Early bird registration begins October 3, 2005 and if you sign up before November 1st you will receive $50 off the tuition. Visit our website at www.winshape.org to register online or get additional information.

Summer camp has always been our main focus, but this year we are trying something new during the camp “off-season”. We just recently launched our very first GREAT FAMLY WEEKEND ADVENTURE! It was the weekend of Sept. 9-11. Yes, the whole family got to come and experience a touch of what Camp WinShape is all about. We included some of the most popular camp-wide events, along with skills, for this weekend experience. Our skills included:
Bible Study
Horseback Riding
Mountain Biking
Climbing Wall
Arts and Crafts
Fire Building
Flag football/ultimate Frisbee
Soccer/Basketball
New Nature Trail
You can be assured that we included a big Sock War, and one of Janie Bird’s famous folk dances. After the dance, we all took a silent hike into the Boys Camp’s most sacred place---its Council Ring site---a place where no female has ever visited, unless they sneaked a peek on their own. It was a really special time, sitting around a huge and beautiful fire, participating in songs, games, stories, and personal sharing, over the fire as the evening slips into the night.

Planning for our Great Family Weekend Adventure has been going on for months. What is its purpose? For those of us involved in this family weekend at Camp WinShape, it will be an opportunity for us to pull our own families closer together as well as minister to the families who are attending. When a major disaster like Katrina takes place, personal belongings become less important. In desperate times, we learn what we treasure the most. For most of us, it is our personal faith in God, our families, and our friends.
I think it is ironic, that our family weekend will be going on at the same time so many families are in disarray from Hurricane Katrina. For many of us, we see it as a time when the nation pulls together for a common cause, without regard to race, religion, or culture to help those families in need. Maybe by working together in reaching out to these families, we will learn more about God. So many who have lost family members and everything that they owned, must feel that God has forsaken them. Hopefully, when order is restored, all of us will find God to be more real than ever before.

From the weekend, I hope we will:
Gain a new appreciation for our own families
Gain new insights into each other that allow us to communicate more effectively
Love on each other more
See strengths emerge within each other that we may not have recognized before
Have lots and lots of safe and wholesome fun
Make new friends
And more than anything, that we will realize that God must hold a prominent place in our homes.

Once dates have been confirmed, you can access information about upcoming Great Family Weekend Adventures on our Website @ www.winshape.org.

I look forward to your comments, questions and ideas for future Camp WinShape BLOG’s. For now, this is Crooked Arrow, (Rick Johnson) signing off.