We have new (old – but young) friends at camp for awhile! Last Friday, Justin and Julia Kurtz moved up from Asheville, NC to spend 5 weeks helping out while Julia does her nursing clinicals in Hazard. They met for the first time here at Bethel Camp when they were young, then got to know each other better over several summers while they were on staff together. It’s good to have them here.

We are so grateful to Martha Stoltzfus and Pauline Yoder who, earlier in the week, spent most of a day cleaning Miller Hall so it would be ready for Justin & Julia to move into. At one point during the day, we were talking about the idea of an "age factor." Everyone has an actual age, but there’s another "age" too – the age that you look or act; the age that other people may think of when they see you. Those two ladies must have a pretty low age factor. Either one of them could be a grandmother to my girls, and yet at suppertime, Malin referred to them as "the girls that came to Miller Hall today." And earlier in the day, after spending time with Martha & Pauline, Avery came up to the house and asked for a snack to share with her "good friends."

And that was just the beginning of the spring clean-up process… This past weekend, a youth group from Delaware – about 30 people – came down and got all kinds of stuff done around here. They have kind of a tradition of coming down every other year – doing work projects around camp on Friday and Saturday, then doing an Easter program at the Turner’s Creek Mennonite Church. We didn’t get to see their program at Turner’s Creek, but we had the chance to watch one of their practices. Excellent.

I spent most of my weekend in the kitchen preparing food and catching glimpses of progress from the windows. The camp pick-up and golf cart were kept busy hauling leaves, trash, tree limbs and workers who were efficient enough to catch a ride. A couple of girls were kept busy all day Friday feeding a fire that consumed tree stumps and fallen limbs. Another group cleared a trail through Larkin Holler to the top of the hill. They cleaned leaves out of ditches, emptied out the wood shop and moved everything to another building, hauled rec. equipment up to the old wood shop, set posts for a fence, cleaned out gutters, and put shingles on a roof.

With all of the work that’s gotten done, we feel ready for the spring youth retreat that will be going on this weekend. It starts at 6:00 with registration and a hot dog cookout. There’s still room – if any of you (in 7^th-12^th grades) have been wanting to come but forgot to preregister… come on over!