Day 6 - The night before we prayed selfishly to see some sunshine the next day. This morning we woke up to sunshine! We gave praise to the Lord. It was short lived though. As Ben, Jacob and I arrived at the dock to help load supplies on the boat the heavens let loose again.
As I walked to find the dock where Steve and Leslie were I heard one of the guys scream "STOP RAINING." It didn't right then but 3-4 minutes later the rain stopped. This made loading the supplies so much easier. We had a steep ramp to go down to get to the dock that led to the boat we were taking to camp. As the guys helped Steve and Leslie load the boat I made several trips back to the church to get the rest of the group and their luggage. Earl helped with the final trip so we got everyone and their luggage to the dock in a timely manner. The boat needed to sail by 11:30am.
The 3 hour ride to where we would unload was great. We took in the sights, took pictures, snacked on great cookies, talked, read, slept.... Once we got to our unloading spot we got all of us, our luggage and our supplies off the boat. We then had to hike it all over "The Hump" to a much smaller boat that would transport only our luggage and supplies up the river to the Orton Ranch Camp.
Allison rode in the boat to camp. This meant she would be helping unload all the luggage and supplies once they docked at camp.The TWO MILE HIKE to camp wasn't bad. There is a boardwalk off and on along the way. There are a few places where the boardwalk is in need of repair so we had to get off and step on rocks or a beam or the ground to make our way to the next part of the boardwalk. There were also parts of the hike that were on a muddy trail up and over rocks and trees and tree roots. Also along the way are berries! The hike to camp took longer than usual due to all the berry stops. How cool is that!
We arrived at Orton Ranch and Ben made his ceremoniously run across the ranch to the T-House proclaiming that we had arrived. We located our luggage and moved into our dorms. After that we helped unload kitchen supplies and gather supplies to stock the bathroom in our dorm. Once all the work was done we got to take some time to be introduced or reintroduced to Orton Ranch Camp and it's beautiful setting on the Naha River.
Steve fixed dinner and we ate! We only snacked along the way to camp so everyone was hungry. On Saturday prior to leaving for camp on Monday we did a bit of group building because many on the Team were new to each other. It helped some but there was more to be done. This became evident to me at camp and at dinner. I decided that after dinner we would have a team meeting and work on coming together so that the week ahead we could minister to the middle and high school kids as a group united and not divided.
Our meeting was great and God led.
We had some open and honest discussion that helped us clear the air and come together. No stone was left unturned. I truly felt that we made huge progress in unifying as a group. After our unity discussion we talked about Camp. We wanted to make sure we were all on the same page as we got ready to start camp the next afternoon. We were excited about the possibility of 20 campers coming to join us. Just three weeks earlier only 1-2 campers had signed up for camp so we were stoked that the number of potential campers had risen significantly.
After our time of meeting everyone took time to hang out and have fun before the generator went out at 11pm. Tomorrow will include hiking to the dock to meet Leslie and the campers, hiking the campers to Orton Ranch and then getting Camp started. It's going to be exciting!
As always, thanks for your prayers!
bob g & the AK mission team
