Fun begins at Camp Barnabas

We arrived at Camp Barnabas last Thursday and went right to work on Monday, October 1.  There was a group of high school students from New Covenant Academy in Springfield, MO.  They came here to do a service project and were very helpful.

Check out this gate.  It took a welder (and artist) two years to complete it.  Great way to show off God's creation and the gifts He gives to men.

 

Here is our camp site.  Right in the middle of a bunch of beautiful oaks.

 

Now we are officially here, the cloths line is up and ready and our name tag is displayed.

 

We have another couple sharing this project with us.  They are Ralph and Joyce Rockwood from Michigan.  They are on their way south like we are.  They have been on the road part time for 14 years.

 

When the campers are here, some 500 of them through the summer, all of which are physically and/or mentally handicapped, the camp has a full staff of doctors and nurses and this is the facility they live and work in.

 

In 2005 the camp was the reciepient of an Extreme Makeover.  At that time the crew now only built a new house for the Teas, the couple who started the camp, but they also built a building to house the summer helpers and a building where the kids could go on a rainy day.  This is the rainy day building.  The seats of the chairs are made from 10,000 TV guides which were bolted together about 25 at a time.

 

Of course there has to be a place to feed all of the campers.  Isn't it wonderfully named.

And out back they have one of their cooking venues.

About 9:45 this morning these busses pulled in from Springfield.

 

Here is the crew they brought in. 

  

Last year there was a lot of wind that blew through the camp, uprooting a number of trees and breaking off a lot of smaller limbs.  These kids raked leaves and picked up limbs as well as moved all of the wood which had been cut up by an earlier group.

 

Here is the stack of wood which the boys and girls picked up today.  Some of the pieces we larger than I would have picked up but the students teamed up and threw them on the trailer.  Note the pile to the right of the stack.  Some of those logs are 5 feet long and 20 inches in diameter. 

 

This is Purdy, Missouri.  It is about 7 miles from the camp and this memorial is in the center of town.