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...

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 ...

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...

Get ready... Here comes a long blog post. BUT, it will be worth the read for sure!  Here at Camp Evergreen we love our Germans! The past three years we have been working along side an awesome missions organization WEC and they send us Germanys finest. We have seriously been blessed by the volunteers that have came to camp the past few years. They do preparation in Germany before they come and that makes them come sort of in a group. They all have different Generations and actually have numbered themselves from 1 - 14 (I think we are at 14 already!). They are pretty ridiculously awesome and a lot of fun. We can't wait for you to come to camp to meet them so here we go... I introduce to you Generation Three! What is your name, age and origin? JS: Judith Sorger. 24. Deutschland. MH: Marcel Hecker. 19. Deutschland. MS: Mirjana Stilz. 19. Deutschland. DP: Daniel Pfau. 18. Gambia + Deutschland Describe your family in one sentence! JS: Amazing an...

Saturday, June 28 was a great day for an AGM. If we could emphasize one thing, it would be the need for our society members. We can not, nor do we want to minister on our own. Our members are an integral part of the ministry here at Evergreen. We value your input, we covet your prayers and we need your support. We would encourage you already to put June 27, 2015 aside and join us. Highlights of this years AGM were two of our staff members sharing. Felix from Germany was quite animated as he shared about his experience this past year. Sarah shared about how Evergreen has been part of her faith walk over the last 14 years. Eight as a camper and six as a staff member. After a financial update our board was affirmed and several members were elected. Your 2014/15 board is made up of, Andrew Baerg, Alex Fay, Marni Hatch, Cody Hoffman, Barry Langendoen, Bob Thiessen, Keith Thiessen and Kevin Thiessen. We appreciate their commitment to Evergreen and desire to...

“ I love winter!”, “No. Be quiet! I hate the cold!“, “Look at all the snow – so beautiful!”, “Oh, I just want to drive on safe, snow-free roads again.” Hearing such comments is nothing special these days – not at Camp Evergreen either. Both sides think the other ones are just crazy. Even one week into the official spring, there is so much new snow and it doesn't seem to stop. So who's right now? Who's opinion should we join? I want to look at this phenomenon from a German point of view today. Among us 5 Germans the opinions concerning the snow and the winter differ a lot. Some of us would like the winter to continue for another two months. Just because falling into untouched snow is a wonderful feeling; am I right Felix? Moreover, as soon as the cold and the snow stops the world here turns into one big muddy pool. Is that better? Just think of your footwear: winter boots are so  much more comfortable than those stiff plastic rubber boots that make...

It's Christmas Time!     Normally in every German house, it starts with 1 candle on the advent wreath and then you get this feeling: It’s Christmas time! But this year it was different: Although Felix tried his best with playing Michael Bublés Christmas Songs back and forth since October, the Christmas feeling didn’t really want to come up until two weeks before Christmas. But then we were amazed by the effort that the Canadians made to give us a perfect Christmas experience.    It started with a Staff-Christmas-Party in the Heritage Room. Bob and Bev put lots of work in it and created a wonderful atmosphere. Something that surprised us was the food. Although Germans have a big diversity of food at Christmas, we didn’t expect Chinese food at a Canadian Christmas Party. (Yummy, yummy, it was so good! ) For the actual Christmas days, we split up in little groups and we were invited to different people. Despite we spent Christmas at different place...