the green spot blog

We were serving Cotton Candy at our Open House! June 25th was such an amazing day. Seriously one of the most fun meetings around. As a society - our AGM is not only a time to bring our membership together, it's also a time to share ideas, pray for our board, and get excited about the future. I mean - how often do you hear people getting excited over financial reports?!? They did at our meeting! Ice Cream, voting board members in, and exciting news updates filled the first half of the meeting while Gerrit and John had us laughing and smiling with their testimonies. We also had focus groups to get input from our members about how we become Ambassadors for Camp Evergreen, how to increase our Volunteers and do a better job of caring for them, our Spring Fundraiser, and our Pond Hockey fundraiser. Each Focus Group spent time talking about each topic - which we will report back on very soon. The most exciting part? We nearly doubled our membership from last year which is ye...

This last weekend was our Father and Son Retreat! And wow - it nearly knocked our socks off even before it happened! More than 80 Fathers and Sons joined us for the weekend. I have a feeling that next year there will be space issues. Want to help us solve that? Go to www.reachinghigher.ca to find out! Our speaker, Chris Ney, spoke to our Fathers and Sons about Identity: where they find their identity, who people see them as, and how we are to be reflecting God. It was an incredible weekend in our sessions, activities, and in the Dining Hall...oh boy, the food was unbelievable! Rather than try and describe the retreat - let's just show it to you in pictures. I think you'll quickly understand why Father and Son is where it's at! Well - that's a wrap! As you can tell - it was an amazing weekend with our Dad's and Sons. I hope you can join us next year...and in 10 days (June 25th)...when our AGM and Open House happens!! Registe...

June. It's June 9th. We're less than 30 days until the first day of Summer Camp. Whoa. We're 15 days until our Summer Staff arrive. Which means one more thing... We're 16 days until our AGM and Open House. Let's talk about our AGM for a moment. Annual General Meeting. Doesn't sound like fun, right? Who wants to come to camp for a meeting. But that's where you would be wrong. We do skits, have ice cream, laugh (a lot), explore camp, and take an active role in where Evergreen is going. It's a gathering of people who are "sold out" for camp. You're in a room full of folks who have a deep love of Camp Evergreen, who believe in the importance of camp, and who want to be part of what we do here. Sounds a bit more interesting, right? Do you love camp? Do you believe in what we do here? Did you have a life impacting, life changing, life transforming week at camp? Maybe YOU haven't personally experienced camp but you've seen th...

Just over a month ago we welcomed 17 more staff onto site for our Spring Season. These staff, along with our winter staff, have been and will continue to serve our Guest Groups that come through the camp in May and June. These groups are largely made up of schools, Scout and Guide groups, and Churches who are having retreats here. Gerrit and Mikaela Challenge Course Training Days are busy and long - three meals a day, five activity blocks, cleaning, and evening programming which includes wide games, Yodel 'n' Hum, and campfires. Our staff work tirelessly to serve our groups and make sure that they are having an unforgettable experience here at camp. Sometimes you hear people say that camp isn't a "real" job. I'm pretty sure I could make some pretty strong arguments towards saying that there are not many jobs that measure up to camp work. It's not just work though - our staff do Bible Studies together, play sports together, and straight up hav...

One of our favourite days of the year happened on May 25th. It was our annual Senior's Day here at Camp Evergreen. We love it - we love when we are able to welcome these folks on site and show them around.  They are always such an encouragement to our staff. We even had some Senior's on Friday who were brand new to Camp Evergreen! Brand new first time "campers"! Now - if you think you're too old for camp...you'd better start reconsidering! We had a fantastic time touring the camp - seeing the site for the new building, hiking out to the barns to see Blue, our newest addition to our horse herd, and of course, to our Archery Range where nearly every Senior had a chance at shooting an arrow at some balloons filled with candy. What a wonderful adventure Friday was! Check out some of the awesome pictures from the day: Blue was quite curious about all of the visitors!  Our Seniors were treated to a wagon ride by our horse team, April and Irish! ...

Board Member, Keith Thiessen manning the grill. Saturday was an awesome day! Do you know why? Because we made a way for a bunch of campers to come to camp just by eating pancakes! How great is that?!? Tim was cooking sausages at 6am! Jogee joined folks from Linden MB as we served up an a.m.a.z.i.n.g. breakfast at the Linden Skating Rink. Cooking began around 6:30am (I may have snuck a couple of sausages...cooking pancakes is hard work!) and we started welcoming folks at 8am. 130 people came to eat pancakes, sausages, and farm fresh eggs (thanks Ratzlaffs!) with us. These folks generously donated $3,307.60 towards our Campership Aid program which provides financial aid to families who otherwise cannot afford camp for their children. You can read more about our Campership Aid Program here. It is so humbling to see our communities and partner churches band together to support families from across the province so that all kids can have a life transforming experience at camp. ...

  What an amazing couple of weeks it's been here at camp. Last week we welcomed our Spring Staff onto site for training. It's always a crazy week full of a tons of information, games, and learning how to teach Outdoor Education in a short amount of time. Next week we will devote the whole blog about what it takes to be a staff here when it's not summer. Today...today we just want to say thank you. THANK YOU! Our Dinner and a Laugh Fundraiser was a huge success but more than that - it was just a wonderful evening. Start to finish, we just really loved connecting with and visiting with supporters of Evergreen - people who personally experienced the life-changing power of camp themselves or through a loved on and are invested in the future of Camp Evergreen. It's such an encouragement to US to hear the stories of change and support from our constituents. It all began with an explanation of our Reaching Higher project. If you don't know what Reaching Higher is - c...