the green spot blog

The Willsonball Pit Josh built for his youth group in Berlin Hannah S. getting hitched! I recently returned from a trip to Germany. As you might expect, it was amazing. I love history, architecture, coffee, and bread and there was a lot of all of those things. Jogee was a pretty happy bear! The reason for this trip was Hannah S' wedding. Hannah was part of our Generation One German volunteers from our partner organization in Germany. It was a great reason to finally make the trip across the pond to celebrate with Hannah and see the place that a good chunk of our staff come from. Our German Volunteers have become a integral part of our staff team. In so many ways - I can't imagine what it would be like to not have Germans on our team. Back in 2012, when Christoph, Jessica, and Hannah first arrived - we didn't know what it was going to be like. Even though we had had international staff in years past - this was going to be consistent. We knew that it would change o...

Something that is getting to be a tradition for us at Camp Evergreen is our annual trip to Vancouver Island that we do with German Volunteers. Something different for this year...we added a Kiwi! No, not the fruit...Emily, our staff from New Zealand. Two Totems are best! This trip is a way that we can say thank you for volunteering for the year. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip as we left the day before Good Friday and returned late, late the day after Easter Monday. It is always very fun to show these young Internationals the beauty of Western Canada. It's also a good reminder to me not to become blind to what makes our piece of Creation so unique and special. From the subtle, yet significant, differences in the mountain ranges to the stark differences in landscape on the Island. Giant trees and trees that grow out of dead stumps to everything green that grows on, well, everything in coastal BC. After a full day of driving, our first stop is Vancouver. Granville Isla...

Hi folks! Thanks for checking in! Camp has just been hopping for the last couple of weeks. September is our busiest rental month of the year seeing nearly 1100 people through our site. Isn't that crazy? We'll get back to blogging pretty regularily now but it almost always seems like we need to take a step back from the GreenSpot in September to take a deep breath. The beginning of September also means that we see our new generation of Germans through and this year we've expanded to see a staff member from Ireland and one from New Zealand. It's been so much fun to hear all of the fun accents amongst our staff. We wanted to introduce you to all of them in a fun way so here's a bit of an introduction to our six internationals: German Generation #5 - Left to right: Julian, Jonas, Sophie, Franca, Marina Left to right: Emily (New Zealand) and Shauna (Ireland) I (Jogee) asked each of the staff questions about their impressions of Canada, what they ...

At Stanley Park Possibly one of the most funny jumping pictures. This last week was our big trip to Vancouver Island with our Generation 4 Germans. As you may know - we like to take our Germans on Adventure Days now and again...all of which you can read about here . Our trip started out at 7am from Camp with the goal of driving to Stillwood Camp on Cultus Lake near Chiliwack. In previous years, the van as been quiet and sleepy for nearly the entire trip (even Daniel slept last year). But not this year...folks were singing and chatting and quite alert for most of the way. It was beautiful weather and we got to Cultus Lake right on schedule...however - nobody volunteered this year to take a dip in one of the deepest lakes on the Mainland. They did, however, run every trail up the mountain from Stillwood. The next day - was Granville Island and Stanley Park. We ate delicious market food and hung out with the whales at the Acquarium before heading to the ferry. It was amazing ...

That's how many Germans we're at. Twenty! Can you even believe it? Two weeks ago, Marlisa (Marley) Nikesch, our twentieth volunteer from WEC Germany arrived, rounding out Generation Four. Introducing Generation Four (you have met Toby, Gerrit and Manuel on Facebook): A giant welcome to Marley...we had some challenges finding the "right" picture: Some of you may remember that we name each year of German Volunteers by Generations. We started back in 2012 with Generation One that consisted of Christoph (#1), Jessica (#2), and Hannah S. (#3). We assign numbers (for no other purpose than to keep their order straight in our heads) based on when they arrive - making Christoph German #1...much to Jessica's chagrin. Generation Two started with Maren at #4, Daniel at #12 in Generation Three, finally Miriam who was #15 started Generation Four off. It's pretty amazing to think that only a few short years ago this whole life-changing adventure started. Not just ...

Most people don't get excited about Annual General Meetings, but here at Camp Evergreen we like to think of them as our Awesome General Meeting and combined with our Open House in the afternoon is one of our favourite days of the year! Highlights of this years AGM include:  - a great skit led by our German volunteers.  Watch out for that squirrel!    - three board members sharing a short testimony and being re-elected for a three year term.  - a great (and entertaining) financial report - thanks Kevin!  (who knew financial reports could be entertaining?)  - the launch of our Reaching Higher campaign.  - free 2016 camps given away.  - record number of 54 members present!   Each member present received a backpack with a special members pen and pin.  Courtney was also handing out an alumni pin that we were encouraged to proudly wear throughout the day.  Its never too early to start thinking about becoming a ...

I love our German Adventure Days. It's a time we carve out in our schedule to take our German volunteers on some kind of adventure as a way to say thank you or honour them for their service here at camp. It's like when we take them to the Coast . Horseshoe Canyon Yesterday we adventured to Drumheller which is one of my favourite places to go in Alberta. I love the Badlands and the Royal Tyrrell Museum. I also love learning new things - I get all these questions...like why is the museum called what it is? I know the Tyrrell part but why Royal...well - our Queen apparently visited the museum and it was renamed to the "Royal Tyrrell Museum". Who knew that our Queen dug dinosaurs! Some pretty impressive acrobatics from Hanna, Mirjana, Miriam and Daniel! We started out at Horseshoe Canyon which is the most amazing starting place. You can't see the canyon...even when you park facing it - it isn't until you get out that you see how cool it is. A collective ...

Last week was an adventure! If you didn't catch it on our Facebook page, we took our German Volunteers to Vancouver Island. And we're back! We number the same as when we left for Vancouver over a week ago so I guess that means we didn't lose anyone! You would think that keeping track of them is an easy job but when you've got three or four staff of any kind going different directions, jumping in oceans and mountain lakes, climbing trees and exploring the big cities...I will admit - there were moments when I questioned if we were going to come back with the same number we departed with! It was a very fun trip full of thousands of kilometers, lots of swimming, and beautiful weather. That's right, after spending a couple days trying to prepare our Germans for rain and clouds...we got beautiful blue skies nearly the whole time. I guess we brought the Alberta sun with us! As you can tell from some of our photos - it certainly wasn't dull travelling wi...