For three days this week all of the staff gather on Camp Barakel’s west side to deep clean our main buildings. In a couple of weeks, we’ll do it again on the east side. It’s a big job made smaller by many pairs of hands. And even though these are days when there’s a lot […]
Anything and everything
On a recent Saturday this winter, a pair of gloves rested on the engine cowl of the Barakel bus I was driving. I was one of three shuttle bus drivers for a teen retreat. A silent prayer passed through my mind asking God to bring the person who owned these gloves to ride on my […]
Your days are numbered
Hello Friends, Carolyn here. Winter is a busy season for us at Barakel. During the week we prepare for our guests. There are lodges and cabins to clean, food to prepare, snow to plow and shovel, plus a variety of other things to be done to get ready for weekend winter retreats. The weekends are […]
You’re Welcome
Near the end of our winter retreat season here at Barakel, we have two weekends when we have a combined Junior and Senior High teen retreat on both sides of camp. On those weekends we bus campers from camp’s west side to the east side for three of four chapel sessions. Our retreats are really […]
Time with teens
Greetings Friends, Carolyn here. I work in the trading post during retreats. The trading post carries various gifts, t-shirts, sweatshirts, snacks, and soft drinks. It also carries good Christian books and Bibles. I also have the privilege of ordering and stocking those books. Since I love to read I enjoy this. At the end of […]
“Thank you!!!!!”
What a powerful way to say goodbye. One of the many fun parts of being the chapel leader for a senior high retreat is saying goodbye in the road as cars, vans and buses leave Barakel after a full weekend. On Sunday as I stepped onto the bus headed back to Immanuel Baptist in Saginaw […]
All I do and say
This weekend will be special for me. I’ll be leading Senior High Retreat chapel sessions. My older brother Ken will be preaching. My younger brother Nathan will lead the music. With Nathan will be his daughter, Grace and our two youngest sons, Zachary and Josiah. We don’t often get to serve together. But when we […]
When It Snows
I had the privilege of leading chapel last weekend for the teen retreat on Camp’s west side. It also snowed. A lot. Which means I needed to shovel and plow a lot of snow. It takes all of our staff men and seasonal staff, and even retired staff and volunteers to keep up with the […]