One of my callings in our church is that I am camp director for our Young Womens Group – which I LOVE. I don’t know why but being around the youth energizes me and takes me right back to when I was that age and all the fun that went along with it.
This year we had Stake Camp – but they used all the ward camp directors to help plan camp and to help carry out activities while up at camp – so all of us camp directors felt pretty involved. In any case – the day before we were supposed to head up to camp we got the startling news that camp had officially been POSTPONED due to Forest Fires( at least for the time being) – and that there was a possibility of camp being CANCELED permanently. ALL of us were devastated by this news and so in an effort to help I spent my entire morning and afternoon on Monday desperately trying to figure out a backup place where 350 girls could camp with running water and bathrooms. Not an easy task for sure.
I ended up getting on the LDS church’s website and was able to find that the church actually owns over 20 different camps in Utah that can be used for girls camp. So I made a list of which ones might work for us (were close enough) and then started calling around. I ended up calling about 15 of them. Unfortunately not a single one had any openings. Not. A. Single. One. I was starting to lose hope.
We received the news from the stake later that day that if the canyons didn’t open back up by Tuesday morning that camp would for sure be canceled but that they were opening it up to individual wards to decide if they wanted to do their own ward camp instead. So after talking to the Young Womens President in our ward it was decided that we should start planning our own ward camp as a back up in case stake camp didn’t happen. This meant a LOT of last minute planning and a quick trip up to the Spanish Fork Canyon Park for family home evening to see if the camp site they had available might work.
So we made a Family Home Evening out of it spent the evening at the park. Unfortunately though the mosquito’s were HORRIFIC and within 2 minutes of being outside I had already been biten 4 times! I ended up RUNNING for the car to take shelter and stayed in there the rest of the evening. For some reason the Skitters REALLY like my blood. Adam of course received No bites – as usual.
The boys didn’t seem to mind or care about the skitters though so they stayed outside and had a ball playing on the playground. Below are some pictures from the evening.
Checking out the possible campsite for ward camp.
Playing on the camps playground
Our view from the car.
On the way home we drove up to the Spanish Fork Reservoir to show Adam the park there. The clouds were so pretty.
The hazy smoke filled sunset from the Spanish Fork Reservoir.
The good news is that Stake girls camp was NOT canceled and so we didn’t end up needing the campsite after all or to have to plan ward camp on the fly. We felt so very blessed and that a true miracle had taken place. We did end up having to go to camp later than expected – but we just felt lucky to be able to go at all! What a tender mercy to have things end up the way they did.