Hey all! It has been some time since David’s last update to the blog. Hopefully you haven’t lost interest with us yet. I’m going to try and get you updated on what we’ve been up to here at camp for the past month or so. I almost don’t even know where to start. The weather here the past few days has been snowy. We got about a foot of snow on Monday. As a New England girl myself I’m not used to seeing snow in October. Actually I’ve never seen snow in October…until now. The snow puts a damper on any projects we were hoping to complete before winter. But even so we were able to accomplish a lot in the past few months since summer camp ended, at least from my perspective. A lot of our projects had to do with improvements on the Hawethorne’s house, such as building a new deck, putting in a mud room, finishing the siding, and finishing a new room in the basement. Other projects included building and finishing benches for the new tables in the dining hall. Those were completed in most part by Josh Vinson. Josh, his wife Lauren, and there baby girl Ruth joined us on staff this summer and were invaluable to the camp. Since summer Josh has worked to complete a few projects for us, the benches being a big one. They look amazing and I can’t wait for you all to see them!
As we’ve entered our retreat season we have already welcomed over 8 groups onto the grounds. Many church groups and a few school groups. It has been fun to interact with them. I hosted my first group just last week. Which basically means I make announcements to the group and see to anything they might need. Now for a person who has a hard time with public speaking like me this can be very nerve racking. But the group was very gracious with me and it went very well. A great help with this has been watching Cathy do her thing. And by her thing I mean host other groups and being able to watch how she interacts with people. She is highly relational and very good at seeing to a groups needs. She’s an all star when it comes to her job.
Some of my favorite moments so far this fall have been in the kitchen. When we host a group at camp we often cook for them. Which entails the actual cooking of the food (done by our lovely cook Hannah Wolinsky), serve it and do the dishes afterwards. You know, the normal kitchen stuff. But this is also a great time for us as a staff. We’re not usually all working in the same place on any given day, so for us to all be together serving a group is just fun. Fun to interact with the group and with each other. More often than not we joke around and enjoy the opportunity to all work together. The kitchen has been a very joyful place for me this fall.
Well I’m sure that’s enough to get you up to speed for now. May God bless you in your every day interactions!
TessaCoates Intern Yellowstone Yellowstone Alliance Adventures
