Keokuk Internship: Mission Trip Day 1

I’m just plain exhausted. We met at the church today at 8am and drove for 3 hours to our denominational church camp in Newton, IA.

At the camp, our main project is to build a shelter house at the picnic grove area. There are other projects we’re also working on and getting done. For instance, our camp has a mini golf course that the Disciples Men group decided to put in and congregations helped with. A group of our youth put gravel around the holes. We also have groups working on redesigning the bathrooms in one of our cabins and another group working on kitchenette-esque wooden areas in the rustic villages the middle schoolers camp in. I know that kitchenette and rustic probably aren’t two things you hear together often — think a lot of wood in the middle of woods crawling with animals and you can get close to the picture. I worked with the group doing the shelter house. We got about four hours of work in before we finished for dinner. In that time, we filled 14 holes with concrete bases and then set three 14′ tall 6″x6″ poles in the ground and cemented those in. We have a 11 left to do before we can put an outer perimeter and trusses on the top.

It’s always great to be at camp, but it’s especially fun being here with this new group. While few in Keokuk’s group are new to camp, I’m not used to being part of their group; it’s fun! Tonight I was on the clean-up crew for dinner and they even let me resume my old duties of working in the dishwashing room. I loved it! I saw once again last night why I love washing the dishes so much: it’s making order out of chaos at a rapid speed. I finished swimming before I came in to type this, so I’m going to go back to the cabin to check some stuff out.