Life at Zion's Camp

I can see why missionaries have a hard time finding the time to write to their families. A typical day in this missionary's life goes like this. Wake up around 6:00 AM. Study the scriptures for half a hour to a hour. Try to squeeze in a little nourishment. Go walking for 45 minutes. A quick shower and you’re off to devotional and planning meeting. Feed the chickens. Start the paper work for the reports being done on that day and then answer the phone. Fix lunch for Elder Larsen. Return to the office and do some more office work. When there are people in camp it means there are people coming in and out all day long needing things and checking out equipment. Go to the bank and to the post office which is 25 minutes away. Cook dinner for the other couples, this is done two nights a week. Gather the eggs and feed the chickens again. Plant the garden and watch for the plants to start growing. No significant sunshine yet so not any sign of growth. When you live in a small area like we do it requires constant upkeep to keep things in there place. By 9:00 at night I am exhausted and crash into bed. Henry is equally as busy. He doesn’t cook but he is busy all day long.
We have a different couple that we are serving with now. Elder and Sister Grant were moved to Morningside Farms, on Vashon Island. He is a builder and they needed his help over there. The Burkes from Sandy Utah have taken their place. They are older than Henry and I and do their best to keep up with the young couple the Kuglers. Sister Kugler is 52, ten and a half years younger than me. Elder Kugler is 60, eight years younger than Henry. Age does make a difference on this kind of a mission. We are having to learn to not go faster than we are able. That is a hard lesson for Henry and I. We try to keep going until the work is done. It has been a hard week for me. My fibro has really been acting up. This is partly because of the wet cold and partly because I have overdone myself. I will do better next week .
We had our big spring cleanup yesterday. Much of the heavy work we did the last few weeks was in preparation for the volunteers to come and get the camp ready for the season. We had over 200 people in the camp doing all kinds of projects. There were 8 stakes involved. One took down dead trees and split them into firewood and hauled them to the wood stations around camp. Another pulled the terrible weeds that grow along our narrow road leading to camp. It is called Broomstick and it is stiff and can scratch cars as they drive past. It grows everywhere. Another stake moved the woodchips under the events in the ropes course area. Two stakes worked to put a new roof on one of the big gazebos. One group put moss out on the roofs of all the buildings. This is quite a project. They scrap the roof then spread the chemical. They also cleaned out the rain gutters. One stake had a young man do his eagle project and do some heavy dirt and grounds work around all of the 9 cabins. This was a major project. One of our ampitheaters had some major work done on it. There were families that showed up to help and they worked on widening trails, picking up rocks that the moles have pushed out of the earth and putting the mattress covers on the 140 + bunk beds in the dorms. All this work made for hungry workers. We served a lot of Chili, cornbread, brownies and hot chocolate. Needless to say when everyone went home around 5:30, each of the missionary couples were pretty tired. After church today all of us took a 3 hour nap. I’ll also be ready for bed at 9:00.
Henry and I did a really fun thing on our P-day. We went with Shellie and our grandchildren to the tulip festival in Mount Vernon Washington. We started early in the day, drove north, took the ferry across to the mainland, drove some more and finally arrived in Mt. Vernon. The first thing we did was eat lunch at a Kiawans Club Salmon bake. It was wonderful food. We then went to one of the gardens where they had hundreds of varieties of tulips and daffodils. A daffodil is my favorite flower so this was a treat for me. We saw lots of different colors and varieties of both kinds of flowers. I had never seen a white daffodil. They were right next to the big red tulips. Quite a sight. Driving home from there we encountered quite the snowstorm. This worried us because the next day was to be our big spring cleanup. Lots of prayers went up that night asking Heavenly Father to temper the weather for our work project. He did. We had a few sprinkles of rain but nothing major. Thirty minutes away, in Port Orchard, they had heavy rain. This to me is just a witness that this is truly the Lord’s designated camp and he will bless us as to what needs to go on here.
By the way if you want to see what the LDS church’s Washington Recreation Parks are like this is how you can look online. lds.org. Go to the top a-z index. Click on C then go to camps (Western U.S. Recreation Properties). Click on Northwest Area. Then go to Property information. You cannot make reservations online as of yet. You must call the different properties. Again for those of you who talked about visiting or having a family reunion up here you must make your reservations very early. Our camp is called Zions camp. There are lots of pictures to see as you click on the choices on the left side.
Well, I’m pretty worn out so I’ll end here. I think of all of you often. I wonder how my dear friends at Whittier are doing, knowing that you are starting your spring testing. I’d love to hear from any of you.
Love you,