The First Morning

Our first blog entry! I'm sitting in my living room getting ready to leave for Camp. It's about 7:00 AM, and we have to get there early to see the closing ceremonies for my son, who was a camper last week at Elementary 2.

Allow me to introduce myself! My name is Jeff Werkheiser, and I'm one of four Co-Directors for Intermediate 2 at Camp Manatawny. This week has been directed forever by Tom Arnold, but he moved to Ohio this year, and it's taken four of us to replace him. We're sharing Directing duties between me and my wife, Beth, and two friends from our church, Andy and Chris Hower.

We were asked to direct this week way back in January, and it's been quite a roller coaster ride getting to this point. We wanted to take some of the great things Tom had done previously, but we also knew we had to put our own stamp on the week as well--hopefully we've done that. Now, as we're only a few hours from the first Campers showing up, we're eagerly looking forward to seeing how God will use this week. We're anticipating about 110 kids, and we have faith that God will work amazing things in their lives because they've been able to go to Camp...

God has really blessed us with an excellent staff, and we pray as well that each of them will be blessed by their experience this week. We're thankful that a lot of Tom's staff has returned, and we're also excited that there are many new faces as well. Our congregation in particular--the Conestoga Valley Church of Christ in Lancaster, PA--has a number of people working this week who have never spent a week at Camp. I can't wait for them to experience it.

I guess that's all for now--time to go load the car! We'll do our best to keep this updated all week, and we'd greatly appreciate your prayers as we share our experiences with you.

--Jeff