Gearing Up for Spring and Summer!

We are finally home for a while now, after traveling non-stop for the past two months! Our trips went great. We made a lot of connections on our recruiting trips. Our two weeks in Indiana flew by as we connected with lots of supporters, friends, and family at my home church in Winona Lake. We also got away for a little vacation to southern Indiana, to the cabin where we spent our honeymoon.

That was a much-needed break in the middle of the busy-ness! A couple days after we returned from the Midwest, Jared left for the weekend to take a Wilderness First Aid course in Santa Cruz. The day after he got back, we left again and attended part of the Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA) super sectional conference at Forest Home Conference Center. Now we have been home for a week, and are enjoying the fact that we have no major trips coming up!

Jared’s main focus right now is on preparing for the Outdoor Education season. Our first Outdoor Ed camp comes in a month, so he is busy finalizing their schedules and making sure the camps are fully staffed. He’s also been busy doing a lot of work on our trails on camp. We have a great group of boy scouts from Simi Valley who have kind of “adopted” us as their camp. They come up here every couple of months and help out with trail work. Last weekend they came for the whole weekend and drastically improved one of our trails, adding more steps and clearing the trail. The boys and their leaders have been a huge blessing to us!

The past month we’ve had several other volunteer groups come and complete projects for the camp. There is a group here this week who just completed our “Human Foosball” court (see video below of some of our staff trying it out), and they’re also building a shed for our skate park equipment (thanks to the kids at Winona Lake Grace Brethren Church for providing the funding for that!).

Here are some ways you can be praying for us over the next month or so:

• Wisdom for our program staff as they interview and hire staff for this summer, and as they plan for the summer program.
• Guidance and strength for Jared as he gears up for Outdoor Ed, the busiest time of the year for him.
• Provision for the new full-time staff needed here at THE OAKS.

Thanks so much for your prayers!