the green spot blog

If you haven't noticed the weather as of late...it's cold outside. But on February 21-23rd, youth and youth leaders arrived at Camp to celebrate our annual Junior High youth retreat, Rise 'n' Shine. It was a cold one but the youth took to the activities, our hockey rink, and indoor Willsonball arena for great weekend. Ambrose supplied the band that rocked us through worship and Brad Huebert brought us the Word. The weekend chapel sessions started with the question, "Is God Real?". Brad's sessions were interactive, challenging, and sticky (well...full of sticky notes, that is). Check it out: We started by making a big list of who God is - which Brad helped us categorize into 5 categories. On Saturday night, Brad invited everyone to personally respond to God from where they were at. It was an incredibly awesome weekend. My highlights were always in the chapel sessions. I think regardless where anyone was at coming into this weekend, we all h...

We had a great night at the Edmonton Fundraiser.  Our hosts, Riverwest, treated us with excellent service.  Gery Schubert served us again, this time as Don Cherry as we had Hockey Night in Evergreen!  The evening started off with the singing of O Canada.  Andrew Baerg our board chair led us by saying grace and then it was time for the first period face off. Here's Don and Ron starting the evening off. Singing O Canada   The food committee at Riverwest simply out did themselves.  Cheri Andres and her crew put on a great spread that was more than enough.  My favourite was the cupcakes for dessert.  (I had an Oreo one!)  Check out the specially made cup cake holders built just for us! Josh one of our seasonal staff was referee for night. Dennis Wiens, pastor at Sunrise spent time in the penalty box courtesy of his son!  Some sort of strange pool noodle game?  Not sure what ...

As registrations keep pouring in - our excitement about the summer just keeps on growing. Check out what happened last year in Trail Blazers II: I can't wait. Only 159 days until Trail Blazers I...are you coming? Oh man, I just can't wait. You know what else I can't wait for? Adventure Classic. Which starts in only 152 days! Adventure Classic is one of our Out-Trips that heads out to the Ya Ha Tinda where our campers and staff go natural rock climbing, white water rafting, hiking, and camping. It's super fun and the Ya Ha Tinda is like a giant outdoor playground! There's no better way to grow closer in your walk with God than being smack-dab in the middle of mountains and creation. Check out some pictures from Adventure: If that doesn't want to make you want to go Adventuring with us...I don't know what will.

We had a great w ork day on Saturday, January 25 th .   The sun was shining, the weather was warm and the food was fantastic.   Here's Ken braving the January temperature working his skills on the BBQ!   (tinkl ing the ivories comes to mind) The flame is all good though, just adds flavour! As you can see by the group picture we had a good crowd out helping us.   Thanks to all the volunteers and our staff for their hard work. We had three projects we were working on.   The first project was to finish insulating the cabins.   Christoph, Sebastian , John and Owen ( far left in the group picture ) were the main insulation crew .  It seems like wearing flannel was the prerequisite. Sebastian and John were on the ground making sure the insulation was flowing.   Notice the high tech instrument John is using to break up the insulation.   To most eyes it would look like a piece of scrap lumber, but to the trained eye ...

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...

YES! The 5 th Annual Pond Hockey was a resounding success!  Ten teams from across Alberta joined us for the day.   Together we raised just over $20,500!  This money will go toward our Cabin Fever project, (a friendly reminder that our next Cabin Fever Work Day is Saturday, January 25 th !)  The Lord truly blessed us with perfect weather.  Our staff worked extremely hard getting the site prepared, putting in long hours “zamboni-ing” the ice!  Ken and the kitchen staff put on a wonderful spread and a special thanks to Taylor Jenkins, our Assistant Program Director, for organizing the event.   The Procrastinators - captained by Matt Enns - captured the coveted “Golden Skate” award.  It was a close battle as the Procrastinators came from behind to beat the District 5 Slugs, (led by our favourite man of many faces – Gery Schubert) late in the game.  Congratulations Procrastinators and we hope to see you back next year to d...

Wow. Can I just say wow? Wow. 2014 has kicked into high gear and we're only 8 days in. Registrations for Summer Camp launched on Monday and we're already dozens AND dozens of registrations ahead of last year. Apparently we're not the only ones excited for camp this summer. And that only makes me more excited (if that's even possible). I LOVE camp. If you've never met me - well, here's the first things to know about me - I love Jesus and I love camp. I love the crazy games and dressing up for no reason other than to be goofy. I love wide games and singing. I love turning cabins into wild adventures for Cabin Cleaning. I love watching kids and staff be transformed by the power of Jesus. Did you know that's why we get up early and stay out late doing all those crazy things? So that we can see Lives Transformed by the Power of Jesus. I seriously have goosebumps right now just writing about it. So in amidst hunting dinosaurs (Jurassic Park), stealing re...