Hello friends and family!
We’re halfway through August already and I’m still not sure what happened to the rest of July. Summer seems to go on forever until you blink and then it’s over! The second half of our busy season was packed with good things, bad things and everything in between.
Camp News
Our relatively chill summer took a steep uphill hike on the temperature scale during the first week of July. With several weeks of triple digit degrees, we had to get creative in order to keep everyone cool and safe. Campers got to enjoy lake time, water games, indoor (air conditioned) activities and even snow-cones! Praise God for a program staff who can change gears on a dime to meet the needs of the people they serve!
A few weeks of custom camps freed up part of our counseling staff to jump in on some behind-the-scenes tasks. Lots of work went into remodeling the new cabins, deep cleaning facilities, reorganizing the Treasure Yard, and so much more! Our Operations Team appreciated the boost of manpower and energy on these projects.
One of the biggest challenges of the summer was an outbreak of conjunctivitis that took most of the Ops Team by storm. Try as you might, it’s nearly impossible to keep sickness from spreading when dozens of people are using the same sinks and door handles. Thankfully, our First Aid Providers were able to get in front of the wave and slow the disease to a stop by the end of summer. For the rest of us, God gave grace to fill gaps when illness thinned our ranks.
At the end of it all, we saw 4,865 people come through camp this summer. That’s 4,865 plots of land where the seed of God’s Word was spread. Some were hard, some thorny, some rocky, and some were fertile. We recorded 100 salvation decisions, but only God knows what kind of increase will come in each of these lives: none, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or a hundredfold.
Palkki News
We have officially moved into our new house! The Grounds Crew moved the contents of our apartment and storage in less than two hours. (And without breaking any dishes, I might add.) The house still feels a little too big, but we’re growing into it and looking forward to using this new tool in our ministry. A huge thanks goes to the Longevity team and the many, many others who put so much time and labor into this beautiful home. Before and after pictures are in the Gallery!
Gabe stayed busy trying to keep our fleet of vehicles running strong to the end of summer. He was also able to finish sanding, priming and painting the Jeep that will eventually be assigned to the director of our Defined program. With that project out of the way, he had time to invest in a new Leadership Live assistant as well as do some end-of-summer cleanup.
I was able to more evenly split my time between the kitchen and my administrative assistant duties as our Kitchen Crew became more confident in their culinary abilities. Much of my office time was spent preparing for next semester’s Ministry Crew: putting together paperwork packets and building policy binders. I also got to teach one more lesson for the Leadership Live girls, which has been a highlight of my summer.
After summer ended, Gabe and I had the opportunity to take a few of our friends to visit Alaska. It was a week of nonstop activity: fishing, canoeing, hiking, shooting, mudding… among other things. I especially appreciated the chance to reconnect with my family (including a brand-new nephew) and my prayer warriors from Soldotna Baptist Church. God has blessed me with an incredible heritage and home front!
Whew. This prayer letter is already much too long and there is much that will have to be left unsaid. But as I look back, my head swims with the sheer number of highs and lows that happened this summer.
Young people accepted Christ. Activities were enjoyed. Projects were accomplished. Relationships were built. Wonderful things happened in the last several weeks!
But there were also campers who rejected the Gospel. Friendships were damaged in moments of selfishness. Loved ones were lost. People got sick. Horrible things happened in the last several weeks.
As Christians, we may not struggle to acknowledge God’s sovereignty in the highest highs and the lowest lows. More often, we frame our faithlessness in more polite terms. “If only… then everything would be good.”
But Job’s friend Elihu says differently in Job 34:12-15. “Of a truth, God will not do wickedly and the Almighty will not pervert justice. Who gave Him charge over the earth and who laid on Him the whole world? If He should set His heart to it and gather to Himself His spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together and man would return to dust.”
Elihu makes the case that God’s authority is the great equalizer of our circumstances. God has the right to orchestrate every life, to allow any blessing or tragedy. When you’ve got the world on a string, it’s good because God said so. When you feel like the sky is falling, it’s good because God said so. There is no “If only…” with God.
We cannot keep our balance on this crazy rollercoaster called ‘Life’ if we do not first acknowledge that God is the one who engineered the track. And He is good.
Love in Christ,
Gabe and Cheyenne Palkki
PS: There are some pretty cool before-and-after pictures in the Gallery! And take a peek at how God has provided for us in the Prayer page!