church_camps.odt

January 31, 2015

My first and only experience of going to youth camp was when I was 13. Our church youth went to Beulah Beach, along Lake Erie at that time. It made a big impression on me, since I had not gone away from home much. I remember singing in the tabernacle at the evening services and going on a boat ride on Lake Erie. One of my Comfort cousins, Carol was the camp nurse. Also remember that I bought some song books in the book store.

In the 1990s Gilbert and I were coming home from a trip out east and saw a sign for Beulah Beach, so we stopped to see the camp. We walked around the grounds and I tried to picture it from being there so many years before. I didn't recall much of it, but enjoyed having the opportunity to see it again.

The Assembly of God campgrounds FaHoLo (faith, hope, and love) is at Grass Lake, Michigan up near Jackson. When we started going to the Assembly of God church, we started going to the campground. The first time we went was on our church bus for a Memorial Day service. We took food for a potluck dinner. We went for the 4th of July and Labor Day services as well. They were well attended. There were such speakers and singers as Dave Wilkerson, Dallas Holmes, Jimmy Swaggart. One time we went to hear Jimmy Swaggert and we had to sit outside on the ground, since the tabernacle was full. Another time when he was there over a thousand cars were turned away due to overcrowding. That is when they stopped having such well known people, since the facilities would not accommodate that many people. Also they quit having the services on the summer holidays, and had speakers during family camp time.

Nancy and Karen each worked at the camp for 3 summers. Only one time did they both work there at the same time. They worked in the kitchen, snack bar and wherever needed. I would take them up on Sunday evening and go get them on Friday nights. Saturdays were spent doing laundry, so they had clothes for the next week. It was a great experience for them.

I used to take my vacation time from work during Family Camp, so I could attend. We wouldn't get home until after 11:00 p.m., so it was too hard to go and then get up to go to work the next day.

July of 2003 Gilbert and I purchased a 1997 Breckenridge 36 foot park model camper. It was a way to have Gilbert be able to fish at the lake, we could have a place to stay when we went to camp and have fellowship with other campers during the summer. At one time there were 6 campers owned by people from our church next to each other. It was fun to be there and eat together or just get together to visit. We would walk to the lake and sit and relax. The closest we ever came to living at a lake. In the fall, schools would rent the campgrounds for a week to have their band camp. If we were there at the that time, we would listen to them practicing. We sold the camper in July of 2007, after the lot rent was raised to almost double and others from our church took their campers out. We didn't go up often enough, stay long enough, and were not able to do maintenance on the camper or mow ourselves, so thought it best to sell it. I missed it a lot, but knew that we had made the right decision.