Bethany Farm – Day 1

(yeah!  we have some decent Internet access here in the corn fields of Iowa…amazing isn’t it?)

Our first day at Bethany Farm is still ongoing but while I have a break I wanted to share some photos with you and give a brief update.

There were 46 kids, and even one more who showed up later.  There are about a dozen upper high school and college aged counselors, plus the program director and his wife who do a great job helping in many ways to make the camp run smoothly.  Our hosts who for many years have run the camp are busy all day making sure everything is running well behind the scenes.

My opening message seemed to go over well.  I shared mostly photos and video clips from our experiences in Mexico and some of the cultural aspects and meanings as well.  After my session this morning the director said, “Man, that makes me want to go to Mexico!”  Another counselor who is a sophomore in a Bible college said he has been wanting to study Spanish in Mexico and is very interested in CAM’s summer internship program.  I need to get him hooked up with someone involved in this for next year.  That’s cool.

It’s been raining way more than average in this area for some time now.  The rivers and creeks are all swollen, the ponds are full, and the ground and dirt roads are saturated.  It’s cloudy and probably going to rain each of the next few days.  Everything is so lush and green.  It’s such a contrast to our dry, dusty and brown habitat in Mexico.

We appreciate your prayers for us throughout this week for God’s work in the lives of these kids.  The messages the next three days will be much deeper and challenging to the kids.  May it be received well and may God be glorified in each session.

Thanks for praying.

A local bank no longer needed a portable banking center and recently sold the camp this very useful trailer for $500.  With a $10,000 investment they were able to completely install this on-site as a girls dorm.  This was much cheaper than anything they could have constructed themselves, not to mention, the girls can have group devotions behind bullet proof glass!  I suppose that’s quite a selling point to parents of the girls knowing how safe they are at camp.  Ha-ha.

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