Hey everyone!

 

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to send out any letters during the summer, but as I’m sure you can imagine, I was a bit swamped. Things have slowed down a little now though, so I can move back into my routine of sending out a letter every other month. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to Charlotte some time soon to see some of you as well!

Anyway, let’s just jump into how things went during summer! Looking back at the summer now, things went really well, I think. That was due in large part to the staff that worked under me, who did a great job. On top of that, I bought about twenty radios to help us all communicate quickly, which also was a huge help. Of course, whenever you add something like radios there are bound to be problems that come along with it, like making sure everyone is returning them to the office, keeping them charged, or them breaking.

It’s a good thing that we did have the radios though, because if there is one thing that you learn working at a camp it’s that plans change. So the radios helped a good deal with that, because almost as soon as a problem came up we were able to take action. I’m not sure if past summers had quite as many problems as we had this year or if maybe it’s because I’m responsible for so many things, but there were quite a few stressful days. Aside from the ever present possibility of thunderstorms every afternoon, at one point we lost power to four different buildings, including one of our dorms and the kitchen, because of some old wiring that was part of the dining hall. But God provided and none of our food in our walk in fridge or freezer was lost and we didn’t have to relocate half of our campers to the gym for the night, because the power company was able to come out late and work on the problem for a few hours while the kids were in the pool. There were a few other problems that weren’t quite as large throughout the summer as well, like our boat breaking down once or twice, but in each instance things were taken care of and the kids didn’t even know about it.

Hopefully next summer there’ll be less problems like these, which I’m sure our maintenance director will appreciate, because this fall we’re going to finally be starting our addition on our dining hall and updating a lot of it so that it won’t be so cramped for everyone during meals. The plan is to start at the end of September, so it’s exciting to finally see this coming together.

The fall is shaping up nicely, and after a week of resting after the summer, everyone seems ready to jump back in. We’re pretty packed on weekend groups again, but this year we tried to schedule all our groups so that the dining hall renovation won’t interfere a lot with the groups that are coming. I’ve also moved out of where I was living before and into a house with our maintenance director and his wife on the camp property. They’re a growing family though, so this is just another temporary place until I start looking for a more permanent place in the beginning of next year. In case you don’t know who they are though, Rob and Sarah Sutton are some of the newest members here at camp. They just had a little girl named Imogen the beginning of this year, and they’ve both been doing a great job. While Rob is handling all of the maintenance that our buildings and grounds need, Sarah has been helping out in the office and is helping with some of the scheduling for groups as well as reviewing and updating some of our policies here at camp.

As always, you all have been so supportive of me being here at camp and taking on the job of being Program Director. I’m always happy to talk about what’s happening here at camp, and I love to get any ideas or suggestions that anyone has about more things that we can do here. And of course everyone praying for me and the gifts that you send are why I’m even able to continue doing what I do here. I really don’t think it’s possible for me to thank you all enough.

There’s probably more to say, and I’ve only really hit some of the highlights, but I’m going to try to limit myself to just one piece of paper. Anything that I can’t fit in this letter though, I’ll be sure to put it in the next one though, so don’t worry.

Thanks again,

Joe Hansen