A visit to the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Lake Michigan...

Lovin our afternoon at the Beach
The girls
Madison and Joslyn
My three beauties
We always take an afternoon to get away from camp as a family(minus Cole which always makes us miss him more than other times of the week) and go to the Sleeping bear Dunes and a deserted beach on Lake Michigan.
Noah is enjoying the waves this year.
Here is Bell at the top of the dunes.
Joslyn running down the dunes, I just love being the one watching them all come down! I get to run down first-
Dad and Noah
Matt and Noah running down the Dunes.
The girls are already at the top and Noah is enjoying taking his time getting up there-which we are thankful for;)
Noah and I
Madison must of ran down the dunes a handful of times. Oh to have her energy!!
The girls and I-

Matt took a bus load of Junior Highers from Lake Ann to the Dunes the next day. There were around 150 Junior Highers at camp this past week, it was such a blast watching them. There are some pictures of all of them running down the Dunes at the same time, quite the site!!! I will have to post some of those soon!

A Little Crafting Time at Camp

Every Year I bring a new craft for the girls and I to work on in our free time. It helps on those rainy days when you are stuck at the cabin. But usually we end up enjoying it much more than on those rainy days! My crafty friends, you will understand this statement. "I sure hope there is another storm rolling in" because that means you will just have to work on your sewing, darn! This year, I brought simple hoops and white fabric with a lot of embroidery floss and let my girls run wild with their imagination. it has been so fun to see what comes out onto that hoop!
I even was able to quilt out on the porch last night! Heaven on earth!!!
Madison even brought her embroidery to Sr High fight night.
I worked on journals for our the girls of ours who are campers this week. I remember how fun it was to get mail at camp, so I wanted to send something fun to them.
You can see Noah napping in the back room of the cabin while I worked on the girls journals. Talk about peace! Matt and the girls were out at the beach canoeing. I finished the journals just as Matt and the girls returned and Noah woke up.
Joslyn working on her embroidery.
This is my first attempt at embroidery. I have been enjoying having something to do with my hands while I sit and talk.
Madison working on her sunflower.
Bell working on her embroidery. She is making a rainbow.
Madison has barely put hers down! I believe she is already on her second project.

Our Week at Camp

Our week at camp is well underway, and it is again full of God's blessings! This year we left home with 13 campers and our family. This year we road in comfort! Thank you Jesus for our bus!!!

We left church at 10am and arrived at Lake Ann Camp in Michigan around 5 pm. It was a ride full of laughter. We did a quick introduction of names before we left since we were taking such a wide range of ages and some of them did not know one another. As I was introduced as Amanda, Noah promptly and strongly protested and declared, "No! That is Mama!" So, I am now "mama" to everyone. Although I still have some sweetie girls who very respectfully call me "Mrs. Drietz" which I will never get used to no matter how old I am! I think that name still belongs to my mother in law;).

It was nice to arrive earlier in the evening this year, it gave us a chance to hang out as a group before the week of camp began in the morning. The guys made a b-line to the octaball court of course and pretty much spent there time there the rest of the night. The girls had fun walking around and talking, visiting the farm and helping my wee ones find tent worms(fuzzy caterpillars), which are an interesting creature. Here is a worm that destroys trees by eating all their leaves, it leaves anyone trying to preserve the beauty of nature intact, frustrated, and yet, to children, they are captivating, gentle, and harmless and worthy of naming individually. Bell has a bucket full of them already and she gets distressed to think of any harm coming to them!

Instead of stopping for fast food again, we decided to wait and order pizza after we settled into our cabins for the night. Matt and I have a favorite little pizza place up here that came to the rescue for us hungry travelers.

Here is our group this year. We have almost every age group for camp this week. Matt and I are praying for the Lord to stir these kids hearts this week and draw them closer to himself.

We are sure they will also have a blast as well! We continue to thank the Lord for the awesome job all the staff at Lake Ann does each year. They care deeply for the students and want desperately for them to know the love of Christ and they want to present this to them in a way that gives them an experience unlike any other.

We parted ways with the guys for the night and headed back to our cabin for some "girl fun" ! Now I may be a youth pastor's wife, but at this stage in our life, I am not on the trips like I used to be when our family had just started. I am usually at home holding down the fort while Matt runs the crazy pace of the youth ministry at church. So, it has been awhile since I have experienced the "energy" of very excited teenage girls! I think I will sleep for the rest of the week! haha! I am so thankful for the night with the girls! It was fun to play games with them, laugh with them, and get to know who they are. I maybe had to use my "mom" voice once or twice to get the giggles out of them while we laid in the dark after lights out. And I still smile when I think about how they begged me to let me get up at 6:30 to go for a jog, and then when all 6 alarms went off in the morning, not one of them even heard the alarm;). Funny!

Well, it is now Tuesday morning, the kids are all in their 2nd day of camp. We got all of them registered with no problem, met all of their counselors and got settled in our own family cabin for the week! We will see the kids off and on throughout the week in chapel and activities we go to watch, but we are now spending some slow time together with other ministry families who have brought campers up for the week. We were so excited to find out we were neighbors with friends from back home who are ministering at a church in our area. This is the second year we have bunked next to each other and our kids are enjoying playing together again. Well, I should take a break for lunch, but I will share some more later.

Bringing It To Life...

I thought I would share a bit about two sculptures that have captivated me here at camp. They have brought scripture to life in a very real way to the eyes. They have brought a beauty to what has happened between God and man. Now imagine sitting in view of these as the dew is fresh on the ground and the sun has just risen in the sky. There is still a hush over the campground and you are able to reflect on the amazing gift the Lord has given us! FORGIVENESS AND PURITY ANEW! Or as you sit there just as the sun is setting, you can hear the voices of hundreds of students singing in the chapel, full of joy and thankfulness.

The first one is called "Opened Eyes", it is a beautifully painful expression of man after eating the apple in the garden. I always feel this ache when I look at this, but what must it have been like for Adam and Eve, who had known life without evil and sin, and then all of the sudden being awoken to those. The incredible loss they must have felt!


A hole in man's heart that ONLY God can fill!


This is what is written at the sculpture...

"You won't die!" the serpent hissed. "God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil."

The woman was convinced. The fruit looked so fresh and delicious, and it would make her wise! So she ate some of the fruit. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. Then he ate it too. That moment their eyes were opened, and for the first time they saw evil. it changed their spirit so it could no longer fellowship with God. For God is spirit, and it's worshipers must worship in the spirit and truth."

But there is hope God has a plan to restore our fellowship with Him. At just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Genesis 3: 4-7
John 4:24
John 14:15-17

That then leads to the next sculpture here at camp. God's hand reaching down to ours.





Psalm 40:1-2

I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the muck and mire;he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

Psalm18:16, 19b

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;He drew me out of the deep waters.

He rescued me because he delighted in me.

Psalm98:1

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.

Isaiah 41: 13

For i am the Lord, your God,who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear, I will help you.




I always enjoy stopping at these with our kiddos and sharing again with them, the amazing love the Lord has for us, the fact that the God who created the universe wants to have a personal relationship with us! WOW! He knows each one of us intimately. The fact that he made a way for us out of the crazy mess we have made and he did it with His own Son- the sacrifice was personal and was priceless.

A Week At Camp ...

Many of you already know that my family and I are away at camp this week. I had meant to update each day with the blessings each day has held for us, but it has been one of those weeks where I have enjoyed just being in the moments and when I am not, I am snoozing! Wow, I can not believe how a change of pace and schedule can bring out how tired I am! But it is a very good and content tired.

Matt and I have brought campers up to Lake Ann now for two years and we have been blessed by the camp in the fact that they provide our family with a cabin retreat for the week, giving my husband, who is a youth pastor, the chance to refresh, rest, hang with his family and also get to know the camp and be a part of the activities going on. We bring our oldest child to be one of the campers, but the other four of our kiddos stay with us for the week in a fun little log cabin on camp grounds. For us, it is a slow paced week in God's beauty and time to enjoy sitting in on chapel services with the different age groups who are here at camp, but not have the normal ministry responsibilities of life back home. Matt has a chance to study, return messages, and prepare but on a more relaxing time schedule. I believe the Lord really blesses Him during weeks like this.

So, while he is down at the beach with our younger kiddos, I thought I would do one big blog update for everyone.

We drove up on Sunday, it is a 7 hour drive, and the trip went very smooth. We arrived pretty late at camp and had a few kinks to work out with lodging for the night. Normally Matt stays with the guys the first night until camp begins on Monday morning and i get us settled into our cabin for the week. But, this year our cabin was not ready for the kiddos and me, so we had to bunk it in a camp cabin. The thought "hotel" crossed my mind and we even called to get rates, because I had not packed bedding for staying in a camp cabin, but the girl's and I roughed it for the night. Let's just say it was an adventure! With no bedding, no cell phone(I realized I forgot it when we got to our cabin), and not knowing where my husband was staying with the guys, I was also unable to get into the van and trailer for our "stuff"- BUT-the girls and i survived and it turned out to be just fine, and I learned how to be flexible and laid back! I can definately use that lesson more often in my life-so thank you Jesus!

Monday morning started at 5:30 am with my lovelies wide eyed and ready to get out into camp. So we did our best to clean up and we explored around camp while everything was still hushed and the sun was still fresh in the sky. Once everything was abuzz with preparation for the first day of camp, we met up with our crew again and got everyone fed and registered. Cole, our son, and a friend from church, Andrew, were already having a blast. Cole was covered from head to toe on dirt before he was even registered-yikes.


My Coleman is the lovely man with the "Silent but Deadly" Tshirt on. I made the mistake of showing it to him as a joke when we were shopping for clothes. What was i thinking, he is an 11 year boy, like he wouldn't want that shirt! All the kids were busy collecting these caterpillars around camp, kind of creepy, I know!

Cole's age group of campers is bunking in the woods. Their cabins are up on stilts and they do a lot of thier meals over the fire. They even have some of their chapels out there as well. It is Wednesday, and I haven't seen him around, but my girls have and says he is having a great time and hasn't brushed his hair! I guess he is trying for dreds! I sent him a care package with the mail and included amongst the goodies-A BRUSH-since I have the sneaking suspicion he did not even bring one!

Last year was my first time as a mom, having to give up one of my children to a stranger to care for them. Ouch, did my heart ache. The lucky thing for me is that I was actually here at camp the whole time and got to spy on him and watch him having such a good time. By Friday though, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I had to go and tackle him for a hug. I behaved though, and waited until his buddies were not around, so I would not completely embarrass him! Well, this year, I am doing alright with it. But I did get a bit misty when I said goodbye to him. I actually ache more now for the disappointment he goes through when camp is over. I remember those times as a kid! He will probably be just like his dad was and work at camp all summer as soon as he is old enough. Camp really changed my husband's life as a kid and that is where he felt his call to full time ministry, so we have a very big soft spot for camp!

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Here is the kids bunk room in our cabin. All four of them sleep here, it is pretty sweet. The cabin is pretty much in the woods, but we have some great neighbors! It is pretty fun this year, another Youth Pastor friend and his family is up here for the week as well, and they are right next door. Our kids are having a great time playing together and it is so good to just stop and chat throughout the day!



Noah and i are taking a walk through camp and will show you a few sights. He is just so excited to be free of four walls, our little wild man!
Here is the beautiful center of camp, if you want to watch all the activities and kids running around, you can sit out on the swings and soak it in!


The next picture is of a super fun game that they play here called octiball. It is always fun to watch no matter what age group is playing, wether it be 5th graders or sr high!


Here is the lakefront. They have a waterslide, the blob(which is always hilarious to watch), and a few other things.








Noah is sacked out after a fun day of hiking and playing at Lake Michigan.

Bell fell asleep right on the floor after walking in the door after a day down at camp! Ah, the fresh air and lots of exercise!

We took the afternoon on Tuesday to swim at the beach on Lake Michigan. It was a very HOT day, but the water was still frigid, so only the girls braved swimming. It was a very fun afternoon! While i was a good mama and caked on the sunblock on the kids, i was silly in not putting some on myself-and OH HOW I AM PAYING NOW! Let's just say I flinch when anyone comes around me for fear that they will actually touch me! I can barely stand matt putting on the solarcane.



It is always a bit sad to be making family memories without Cole, and yet, I love that he is making his own memories!






There is a bunch more to share, and I will share it later. it is time for me to go find my family and get some grub! Have a wonderful week!

And yes, I brought my sewing machine, if any of you were wondering how I survive a week without sewing-I don't! It travels with me! I was working on a quilt late last night as Matt was studying. I t is pretty peaceful quilting in a cabin in the woods!