Getting into the swing of things and Stick Night

Things got rolling today and I took too many pictures to post in the blog so you can see all the pictures by clicking on the link to the right.  As I arrived for work campers were congregated outside the Field House preparing for the days activities.

I was on the serving line for lunch and got to see all the campers go through. Mr Turgeon or Mr Burns calls on one of the boy campers to bless the food at each meal. The hall is packed solid with campers and workers and the computer lab room just off the main dining area is used for overflow for workers. The campers get plenty of nutritious food to eat with seconds if they wish.  Soup and salad is served at every meal and today the soup was a delicious cream of mushroom...very yummy.

After my shift I went over Mr Brandon's canoeing class where 2G were having a lesson. 

Next was dinner. In the kitchen you are always preparing for the current meal or the next meal or tomorrow's meals. One of the fun tasks is squeezing lemons for the fresh lemonade that is made daily. I like it because I get to sit and give my torn tendon leg a rest!

At dinner I could see that the campers were getting
more comfortable as I got many more smiles than at lunchtime and even campers wanting to pose for photos!

Dinner was delicious Chipotle Cinnamon Chicken drums & wings and hamburgers. Apparently Chipotle Cinammon is the number one seasoning in Oklahoma so I need to buy some as I may not find it in Georgia and I know hubby would like this.

After dinner was Orientation II aka Stick Night! This was so much fun - to see each camper come up and let us know their names, where from, years at PYC and goals. All of them did so well to speak in front of a large group by themselves and some of them even had the confidence to add in humor! Their personalities came shining through and we all had an enjoyable evening. Many of the goals were to give their all in every activity, to be examples to the other campers and to get to know everyone. I took a few pictures but look out for pictures of individual campers to be posted on the Trued Blog or Peacefulstorms.

It's hard to believe that tomorrow is Friday already. We have biblestudy in the evening. Mr Flurry speaks on the Sabbath, yea excited to hear what he will speak on.

Campers arrive, kitchen gears up, Orientation

Today was exciting as the campers started arriving in the morning. At breakfast I met up with friends from Trinidad - Geeta Mohammed and Alicia Sebro who will be working custodial. Geeta's daughter is attending camp for the first time.

I have pictures of many campers arriving but left my other camera in the kitchen so I'll post those tomorrow!

Things are starting to shift gears in the kitchen as we started preparing dinner for over 200 people which was BLT sandwiches and salad. I'm looking forward to seeing all the campers go through the line tomorrow at lunch (my shft is 10am-4pm). I must say how wonderful Mr and Mrs Kreuger are. They are so upbeat and accessible and check with us often to make sure we are doing ok. Mrs Kreuger warms us with her hugs when we arrive for our shift.

I attended the Orientation lecture after dinner given by Mr Turgeon in upstairs in the Barbara Flurry Memorial building. It was a stirring introduction to the camp them of -"Oh How Love I Thy Law". Mr Turgeon said he was inspired to select this theme by King David and also the series of the same name in the RV. His key scripture was Jos 22:5 and he elaborated on the 6 phrases in that verse. Encouraging campers (and staff) to obey the rules and build their relationship with God. Parents of campers will be reassured to know that Mr Turgeon expressed his desire to show each camper just how much they were loved in a genuine way.

Joshua 22:5 But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the LORD charged you, to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Oh and one piece of great news is that Mr Turgeon added 2 more campers today so that's 146 attending and one of the last minute additions was Sarah from my own congregation!

Campers wait for lecture to start

Mr Turgeon greets each camper as they leave

After the lecture my good friend Beryl and I went out to Walmart to pick up a few supplies and a pair of sneakers for me to wear that support my torn Achilles tendon! Actually, it's been holding up really well and I get to sit if I am say cutting up veggies. By the way...Mrs Greaser made an awesome Tomato Basil soup today - rich, thick extremely flavorful.  I'll have to see if I can replicate it because the recipe is all in her head.

You may recognize name of Lorraine Lafferty who is a regular on TE Town.

Ms Beazley greets Lorraine

 

First day of work

I got my first taste of kitchen duty today. I learnt a lot and have a much better appreciation for all that goes into providing meals for tens of people. From tomorrow I'll know what it takes to feed hundreds! First of all there are so many tasks that have to be done to make everything run smoothly and a lot (if not all things) are made from scratch. Today I helped make a big batch of caesar dressing, cut up lots of broccoli and prepared 3 big bowls of salad. They have these cool urns that keep the coffee and Teccino for well over 8 hours.  I had a special treat of helping prepare Mr Flurry's lunch and dropping it off at their office.

The standards of hygiene are very high and the kitchen is subject to frequent health inspections. PCG has a score of receved 100% three tmes! Mr and Mrs Kreuger work very hard to ensure that standards are kept up and their enthusiasm for providing high quality, healthy food is evident. I am going to have a lot of good information to use at home.

This year is the highest number of volunteers ever at 21. We'll be working 6 hour shifts starting at 6am through to 8.30pm 6 days a week. On Sabbath some of the local singles have volunteered to take over. :)

 I saw some more campers arrive today - the English contingent!

Counselors and other staff had their orientation today and started sorting out the shirts for their dorms.

Amy just moved in with us and brought her frog! While Staci has her dogs - so cute minature poodles!  I should have brought Petra!

Concert update

Mr Malone kindly provided me with the names of the artists that performed at the concert:

Mark O’Connor, violin
Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin
Ivonne Hernandez, violin/stepping
Billy Contreras, violin
Gillian Gallagher, viola
Patrice Jackson, cello
Kyle Kegerreis, bass
Hans Holzen, guitar

Mark O'Connor Concert

Last night we had the Mark O'Connor concert. About 10 minutes before it started there was a flyover of 4 F16 planes from the Oklahoma Air National Guard. That was a treat. They were in formation and sounded really lound as they went overhead.

Photo by Ryan Friesen

The concert was packed and I would say most of the people were not PCG. Actually I was expecting to enjoy fiddle music but I was totally amazed at the variety of styles and it was a wonderful concert, so uplifting. Mark O'Connor had 7 other musicians playing violin, cello, bass (cello?) and guitar. They played classical and jazz also. I was moved to tears by Mark's own composition Appalachia Waltz played before the intermission with all 8 artists. Another highlight was a very skilled Canadian fiddler lady who combined a form of tap dancing with her fiddling - very entertaining. At the end the audience applauded for an encore and they played Amazing Grace.

Arrival

Arrived at OKC airport safe and sound. (a little incident happened on the first leg of the trip from Columbia to Chicago. We were coming to land at the runway, the plane was quite low when it suddenly took off again upwards. Whooa I thought where are we going! The captain told us that there was a delay with the previous plane getting out of the way so we had to around the block one more time. That was a little hairy.)

Brent Nagtegaal had left me a voicemail earlier that I would be met by Sophomore Ryan Friesen (I had met him before so knew who to look out for) and sure enough he showed up with Kelly W..

We waited for some other arrivals - Alyssa and Kiana and Laura from New York and a young lady from Canada who does IA online. Kelly was really excited to meet her in person as they had become good friends.













When we got to HQ I was able to hang out at the Windsor girls dorm since the lady I was staying with - Marcela was out of town a wedding (David Brown and Shandise Jones, reside in Edmond). They were packing up in order to vacate for the campers to use the dorm.

Brianna L.

Alison P.

I also saw Sarah Icasiano, Jamie Hawkins and Autumn Kreuger.

Later, I stopped by the kitchen in the field house to introduce myself to Mrs Kreuger. They had a busy day preparing a meal for the Mark O'Connor artists and snacks for the concert-goer. Stephanie Greaser kindly fixed me a plate for lunch!

Around 5.30pm Marcela came and picked me up from the dorm and we went to her house which is located a couple of miles away. I had previously met Marcela from FOT in Colombia in 2005 so it was very nice to have the opportunity to get to know her better. Now she works at HQ with the Spanish department.  I really appreciate the hospitality in having me impose for 3 weeks.

Marcela

My own survey of digital reading

We recently heard an announcement that Raising the Ruins was now available as a Kindle book on Amazon. I am very happy about that as I am more of a ebook reader than hard copy, mainly because it's so accessible and I find annotating the text easier. Anyway...in the announcement it mentioned that Amazon said sales of Kindle books outstrips hard copy books.

While sitting here in the departure area, I decided to take me own visual survey.  I saw first hand evidence of the popularity of digital content. As I came down the escalator to the waiting area, I saw two people below me, one with an iPad and the other a Kindle. In the seating area  my count was 11 people with digital reading devices (Kindle, iPad or Nook) and 3 people with books. Interesting.

Trust not in man

 

On my way to Edmond and I just got through security at the airport which was pretty easy. Bought a bottle of water and had trouble with the cap and remembered that I had my swiss army knife in my bag that I always carry with me (and forgot to remove it). What, you mean the screening didn't pick it up? No they did not. It's not a small knife either and was in the front pocket.  Simply amazing how they spend all this money and someone could still get through with a dangerous weapon. I thought  about notifying them but had visions of being arrested and interrogated!  Maybe it was a good thing that they didn't find it, might have thought I was up to no good. Disconcerting though and reminds me of the hymn we sing that says "trust not in princes, nor in man, better far to trust in God".

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