Our Prayers and Praises

God has continued to pour out his blessings on this ministry this past year. After three years of master planning, site planning, and engineering for our Shiloh Family Resort and Retreat complex near Chase City, Virginia, the local zoning board disapproved our rezoning request.  On the surface, this appeared to be a major blow to our ministry vision and plan, but God had a different view and a different plan.  In the ensuing months, we were able to obtain a 67-acre RV campground on Kerr Lake and Reservoir about 40 minutes south of our home in Virginia. The campground had been owned and operated by the North Carolina Conference of United Methodist Churches for more than 50 years, but was closed for the previous two years due to financial and personnel resource constraints. We purchased the facility in June 2005, and after a significant clean-up effort, re-opened to a full campground in mid-July. We praise our awesome God for many of His servants (more than fifty) who joined us in the three month clean-up challenge that only took three weeks ! 

The first year we were pleased to welcome back a number of camping families that had been faithful supporters of the ministries at Camp Kerr Lake in the past.  The second year we welcomed a growing number of new camping families and refurbished the A-Frame cabins in preparation for our first youth camps.  In 2007 we were excited to offer 4 weeks of our own youth camp programming to 4th-5th Grade girls, 4th-5th Grade boys, Middle School girls and Middle School boys.  In 2009 we expanded our Youth Camp to include some younger campers, those going in to 3rd Grade, and included watersports activities through a partnership with 3/20 Ministries and paintball activities through a partnership with Cross Action Ministries.  We also expanded our spiritual opportunities to include a daily devotional time, a mid-week Bible Study, scripture memorization trails, and a Sunday evening "Welcome Dessert and Worship".  We praise God for his "exceedingly abundant" (Ephesians 3:20) blessing as we continue to grow the ministries at Camp Kerr Lake.  For 2010 we are planning to offer a 5-day youth camp to our 5th -8th Grade campers and include an opportunity for personalized kneeboard or wakeboard instruction.

As in the past, our strategy remains simple -- pray hard and stay out of God’s way as He leads us forward. We have always said that this ministry will move forward on its knees, so I’m asking you to join with us in asking for God’s special provision and protection.