Seeking God in a ‘thin place’
I grew up attending a relatively small Mennonite church—Foothills Mennonite in Calgary—with my family. My family was fairly involved in my church, and I grew up with a typical Mennonite faith. However, as I got older my church experience began to shift. Our pastoral team underwent many changes, and because our congregation was fairly small,…
Valaqua cabin dubbed ‘the bat cave’ after furry visitors move in
Things got a little batty at Mennonite Church Alberta’s Camp Valaqua this summer. During spring cleaning at the camp, located an hour northwest of Calgary, staff discovered a maternal colony of little brown bats in one of the cabins. Camp director Jon Olfert and his colleagues first noticed a strange odor and droppings inside cabin…
Three youths reflect on their experience at Amplify!
Ethan Willms Foothills Mennonite Church, Calgary A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend Amplify! at Camp Valaqua. This was an amazing experience for me, and it left me wanting more. The first thing that made this week so enjoyable was the participants. Meeting all different kinds of people from different provinces was…
‘Finding God in uncertain times’
Edmonton First Mennonite Church has a long-standing tradition of holding its fall retreat every Labour Day long weekend at Camp Valaqua. For the first time in two years, members were once again able to come together and enjoy the beautiful surroundings and spend time in each other’s company. While the church had held alternative activities…
Biking and hiking raise funds for Alberta organizations
This summer, Alberta supporters of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Camp Valaqua got physical to raise funds. MCC Alberta The group that calls itself Wheels of Waterton grew out of Ernie Engbrecht, Ron Esau and Dave Neufeldt’s love for cycling and support for MCC. In 2020, COVID-19 put a stop to the annual relief…
Valaqua gets a spring makeover
Camp Valaqua welcomed approximately 30 enthusiastic volunteers at its spring work day on April 30. Volunteers and staff focused on cleaning up brush and splitting wood. “Our woodshed went from a few sad sticks to full in just a day!” says Jon Olfert, Valaqua’s camp director. Volunteers also repaired the siding on one of the…
Remembering the early days of Camp Valaqua
George Heidebrecht fiddled with the knobs of his slide projector in anticipation of a morning of storytelling. Stories about Camp Valaqua. Stories of adventures he had carried for decades. Stories of boys — now men of retirement age themselves — sleeping in lean-tos, getting rain-soaked, eating over an open fire. Stories of tying their provisions…
Watch: Great grey owls of Camp Valaqua
Did you know that owls pant to cool off, and that they fly without making a sound? Those are just two of the facts you’ll learn when you watch the latest edition of Ninety Seconds of Nature, a series of videos in which Camp Valaqua director Jon Olfert talks about the outdoors surrounding the camp.…
Camp Valaqua, then and now
In March, my friend and I were fulfilling our duty of cleaning out the Canadian Mennonite University Student Council room when we came across a filing cabinet of school newspapers from the 1960s. Being rather loosely committed to our cleaning assignment, we soon found ourselves leafing through submissions sent in by students during the summer,…
Focused on the good things
In this year of so many disappointments, it is easy to lose track of the good things. Even when summer camp is cancelled and so many major events are postponed, God brings us joy. This was the year of the remote event, and our annual hike-a-thon was no exception. We ran a physically distanced hike-a-thon…
