Hello friends and family!
Sometimes, when you live in a fishbowl like a Christian camp, it’s hard to remember what season it is. Especially when the Barstow Walmart starts selling Christmas stuff before Halloween has passed. What happened to Thanksgiving? It seems like our society is trying to live ahead of its time. I’m so thankful for a God who holds the future so I can enjoy the present!
Camp News
This month saw some very full weekends, with almost every bed on property being used. Ironwood hosted the Golden State Association of Christian Schools for their annual conference early in October. Over 130 educators from around the state were able to meet, fellowship, and learn from each other over a period of three days. The Ironwood Fall Women’s Retreat was another well-attended event where wives, mothers, and daughters could get away, get with God, and not have to worry about the dishes! We also got to serve a group of pastors and their wives through a camp designed to refresh and equip those in the fray of intense ministry.
Without camps occupying the beginning of the week, our staff was able to put in some much-needed project time. The Longevity crew did a serious remodel on some bathrooms. The Grounds crew hauled several loads of material to the recycling center and also picked up a trailer full of donated tools. The Kitchen crew deep cleaned fryers, ovens, grills, carts, trashcans, dollies, shelves, cabinets, walls, drink dispensers, and the list goes on. Besides that, Nehemiah Corp arrived last month, and they are working on the new horse area as well as a few new staff homes.
Palkki News
With so many big camps, camp prep and auto maintenance became quite the juggling act for Gabe. He and his assistant often found themselves folding laundry in order to have enough sheets and towels to stock cabins. However, vehicles are no respecters of schedule, and the repairs continue in between camp preps. Gabe sometimes takes problematic vehicles and uses them as his work truck while he's diagnosing the issue. So I never know what truck is going to pull up to our house for dinner. In the last month we’ve had the maintenance truck, the hospitality team leader’s truck, and the white pool truck all parked in our driveway at one time or another.
The highlight of my month was the opportunity to teach a workshop for the Women’s Retreat. My theme was God’s story for our lives. I enjoyed the study and sharing what God had been teaching me. (Although, I must admit I was very nervous.) I also ran my first two banquets of the season. The first one was a practice run to teach our crew how to prep and serve a banquet. Two days later we did it for real, serving one of our largest groups at 130 people. That means my crew made around 600 rice croquettes within three days!
While reading through the Gospels recently, I’ve been struck by Christ’s interaction with the faith of different people. Peter’s bold faith that still drew wrong conclusions. A father’s faith that cried out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” The faith of a Syrophoenician woman who admitted that she deserved nothing and made her request anyway.
The striking thing about these interactions is the “quality” of the people’s faith. It’s uneducated. It’s tainted by worldly thinking. It’s faltering. It’s brash to the point of embarrassment.
And yet it is this kind of faith that Jesus rewards with wonders and miracles.
My faith doesn’t need to be perfect to move mountains. It just needs to be anchored in the God Who can move mountains. So I hope you’ll join me in bringing troubles and requests to the LORD with whatever faith you have: wavering, incoherent, clumsy, ignorant, and completely dependent on our good and sovereign God.
Love in Christ,
Gabe and Cheyenne Palkki
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