Back from Campmeetin'

Last week, our family attended Wesleyan Family Camp at the church campground in Fairmount, Indiana. For trivia buffs, that's the hometown of two "Jims," Dean and Davis (as in movie star and cartoon cat creator). The campground is situated on the edge of town and is fairly large, and fairly rustic (no Camp Michindoh here). Earlier this summer, we purchased a pop-up camper, so that's what we stayed in for the week.

It had been over 25 years since I attended a church camp for an entire week. I remember the days of Canyon Meadows (family camp) and Quaker Meadows (teen camp) in California. But it had been a long time since I had taken a whole week off. The summer is always my busiest time at the university, because I coordinate orientation for incoming students. Family Camp always conflicted with orientation so what was the solution? Hmm, suddenly orientation didn't conflict this summer. Wonder how that happened.

It was a great week. We camped alongside our pastor's family (8 kids, yes, 8 kids). Our campsite is located right next to the playground, which makes it very convenient. You can eat in the dining hall and the food isn't all that bad, but we did all our own cooking anyway. Got one of those portable table-top propane grills so I did burgers, sausage, chops, etc. all week long.

There were services in the morning, but the afternoons were open and often there were activities available for the kids. Although for the most part, our kids enjoyed riding their bikes around camp and just hanging out with our pastor's family more than anything else.

Evenings services began at 7:00 p.m. and a couple evangelists from within the denomination took turns speaking at night (they both spoke during the morning sessions). One of the speakers was HC Wilson, who heads up Global Partners, the Wesleyan missions organization. He was very good and had a very downhome style, with lots of asides (which some may have interpreted as being all over the map, but I loved it). The other speaker was John Ott, from a mega-church in Roanoke, Virginia. He was also quite good, although sometimes was a little too dramatic and I found myself trying to Google some of the "true stories" he told to verify his facts (evangelistic hyperbole perhaps?).

After the evening services, we usually visited the snack shop (a really nice one) and hung around our campfire until midnight or later. One night we drove a short distance to Upland, Indiana and a visit to the famous Ivanhoe's ice cream parlor. Some good stuff, used to go there occasionally while attending Huntington College.

If all goes well, this will be our family vacation for many years to come. We all enjoyed the week very much and you truly "get away from it all" during this time. This was the first time ever where for an entire week, I literally did not read a single news headline, sports score, or knew of anything else happening in the world. It was nice.