Howdy! Director of Camp Joy, Garrett Kreifels here, sending out my first newsletter as the director of Camp Joy. This is my third year as director and I’m excited to fill you in on what we have going on this off season. Personally, this year I have been working half time at Southern Valley Schools as their interim band teacher. It has been a joy while it lasted but the new full time teacher will take over when the kids get back from break. This means I will be back to focusing more time on Camp. I will continue to substitute teach occasionally and coach the E-sports team at Alma. Mattie is doing well as she continues her second year as the K-6 music teacher at Alma. She is currently the One Act coach as well as the Speech assistant coach. She loves her job and enjoys being able to impact the kids’ lives. Emil just turned 1! It’s hard to believe our little guy is already walking around. Pray for his mom as he is now old enough to start getting bumps and bruises on his own. Please also be in prayer as our roof is in need of reshingling, it is holding well for now but needs to be replaced in the coming future. This summer we were able to reach over 300 kids with the Gospel of Christ. It was incredible to watch the way the kids soaked it up, and had a little fun too. Our theme for the year was “Dynasties, heirs to the throne” where we looked at our position as heirs to the throne of God. It was a joy having some Camp Alumni able to be our speakers this year. They did a wonderful job of making sure the kids knew the Gospel and what that means for them as heirs to the throne. The staff really stepped up as the average experience of working at Camp Joy was under 3
years. God worked through them all summer to keep them pumping. We had a wonderful problem where we had to turn away kids because our camps were too big. Keep your eyes open for when the schedule is announced, we are adding new camps to help alleviate some of our overpopulated camps. Part of our bottle-neck is the experience and amount of staff, the other is our facilities. When it comes to new facilities we are trying to stay on top of the ball. We have plans for an all new girls dorm. Included in this letter are some pictures of what we intend to build. The goal of the building is to have a building that is safe, large, and heatable to be used to house kids, staff, and the director in any season. This would open us to having more kids per camp and to have a place for kids in a winter season camp. Another highlight of this building is that the lower floor would be a tornado shelter. We are still in the works of an estimated total cost but it could be upward of $750,000. We are looking to start fundraising and working on getting the process going this winter so we can start in the spring. If you would like to donate to the building you can mail a check with “Building Fund” in the memo or reach out to me. Over the summer we had a few things give out on us that we would like to take care of this winter. At one point this summer we dropped from three freezers to one. We would like to upgrade into professional freezers, they would have more space and be more energy efficient. We would also be able to shop locally on sale more often because we would have the space to store it until the summer. Another need we have is picnic tables. The steel frames on most of our old reliable picnic tables are giving out. We have explored many options on different types of outdoor tables but we’ve landed on wooden tables or full steel tables. If you would like to help build or fund a table please let me know. Lastly we had a forester come out and look at our trees; almost everyone needs to be removed for the safety of the kids. We are looking to remove over 20 trees on the south side of camp. After removal, with assistance from the forestry department of Nebraska we are hoping to replant as many as we can. We have plenty of events coming up this spring that we are excited to put on, including:
Winter Retreat (Flyer Attached)
Mens day in the spring
Ladies day TBA
The Camp Supper
Family Day
Garrett Kreifels
Camp Joy
70790 Corp Road 23Republican City, NE, 68971