My heart is heavy for the families of El Dorado County and the hundreds of homes that have already been lost to the Caldor Fire. We are not currently within the evacuation zone, so we have opened our doors to a few families from the Grizzly Flats community. It has been amazing to see so many churches, businesses, and individuals step up to care for each other. Please pray that the people of this community would see God working, and grow closer to Him through this tragedy.
Pic: Jesse and Jacob Withrow accompanied by Oliver Morris. Their family was evacuated from Grizzly Flats. These two brothers love camp and are at camp any time the doors are open.
Pic: Rick, Ayla, and their three kids are some of our closest friends. They are also evacuated due to the fire.
Pray for the families that have been evacuated and don't know what they will be going back to after the fire is out. There are many more questions than answers at this point, and even those with homes to go back to, will likely be out for a while.
Pic: Mitch worked in the kitchen last week. He is doing much better. We praise God that Mitch is still alive and doing well. Thank you for praying for him and the surgeons as they placed his stint.
SUMMER RECAP
Camp had lower numbers, which we expected due to covid. During one of our girls camps, we had our record high for number of cabin leaders. We have been praying for more harvesters, and were blessed to have most weeks covered in abundance. We are still praying for next summer to have even more cabin leaders, as we expect numbers to increase and we had one camp this summer where we had to turn campers away due to a lack of leaders.
As I think about this summer, a few of our campers stand out. I had one mom message me to encourage me to keep up the race because she came home from a jog and her son was reading his Bible. Her son, Elijah, made a decision to read his Bible more at camp, and she wanted me to know that the decision was real. PRAISE GOD!!
Another camper was named David. His father passed away this year and his mom knew that him and his siblings really needed camp this year. We were able to help them with scholarships and while he was at camp, he recommitted his life to Christ. His sister did the same the next week! PRAISE GOD!!
Each Summer, our church (Cold Springs Church in Placerville) does an event that combines youth fun with serving our community. The event is called Mission Placerville, and this year it was 3 days long. I always love helping at this event because I get to use so many of the skills learned at camp in another way. The service projects this year included helping elderly with yard work and cleaning windows on Main Street. I was also able to take photos and video for the event, which is one of my favorite things to do. The link to the video I made for that event is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX8RrO568rI
Pic: Ian playing a game at Mission Placerville. I wish I had been taking video for this one, because he hit the bottle on the first try, which shocked him as much as everyone else.
Pic: The whole Mission Placerville team.
15 years together and at camp!
On August 19th, Charissa and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We took the kids to my parents house and enjoyed a few days together. We caught up on chores, were able to help our evacuated friends, and most exciting of all, talked without interruption. My highlight of our time together was enjoying sushi and comedian Tim Hawkins together.
Pic: Charissa on our date night. For those interested in sushi, she is pictured with the delicious Carmen and DMC rolls at Mikuni. The DMC is my favorite, followed by the rescue roll.
Pic: Comedian Tim Hawkins
Family Prayer Requests
Please pray for Madilynn Morris as her tooth issues continue. The tooth that was broken last year was infected this last week, and she had to have an emergency root canal. The root canal went well, but she still has a long road to go with her palate expanders.
Students to sign up for fall retreat, and that they would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Compassion and endurance as we serve those that have been evacuated.
If you would like to join our support team, you can do so, by clicking here.
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