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…
Mosquitoes are part of life
I recently told someone that our family holiday plans this summer included tenting for 10 days in northern Ontario. They replied, “Why on earth would you do that? That sounds awful.” Unfortunately that’s the same reaction I get when I tell certain people I go to church. I reflected on this last week while our…
A front-row seat
A highlight of each summer at the Shekinah Retreat Centre near Waldheim, Sask., is the coffee house during our senior-teen camp for ages 15 to 18. Campers come out of their shell and display talents that we didn’t know they had. It is a special time of vulnerability. Coffee House 2016 was highlighted by a…
Making a Mennonite
I did not grow up attending a Mennonite church. Growing up two hours southeast of Winnipeg in Piney, Man., I attended International Christian Fellowship, a small congregation that includes an interesting mix of people and theological backgrounds. It is an international amalgamation of American and Canadian churches on the U.S. border, officially under the Evangelical…
It takes three villages to send 18 kids to camp
What does it look like when two churches and Camp Valaqua partner toward a common goal? It looks like 18 enthusiastic campers! This past summer, the Service and Outreach branch of Edmonton’s First Mennonite Church learned that a number of young people from the city’s South Sudanese Mennonite Church were interested in going to Camp…
The sound of the soul shifting
To feed our mind we go to school, to fix our body we go to the doctor, to feel our hearts we go home, and for our soul to flourish—that is when we go to camp! Camps with Meaning is a space where we leave the ordinary routine of life and take a week or…
Transformed in the wilderness
This year marks 60 years since Fraser Lake Camp began in a farmer’s field northeast of Bancroft, Ont. Since then, the camp has evolved and now covers 105 hectares of forest, field and lakefront. As a staff member at Fraser Lake, nature has always been my primary conduit to God, although for many campers this…
Moments like these
Youth Farm Bible Camp is just that: Bible camp in a farm atmosphere. Located outside of Rosthern, Sask., we have wide open spaces holding pastures for horses, goats and sheep, and the many paths of our corn maze. Although some things around the yard have changed over the past 74 years, we still hold the…
Stereotypes Written Over with Faces
Last summer, we were camping at Crabtree Falls in North Carolina. It was a new experience for us. We’d been through the state before, but had never spent a night and had never tented in that area before. One night, after a relaxing evening around the campfire, I was peacefully dreaming, curled up in my…
