Family Photos

A wonderful thing about living at camp is you get  the chance to meet many talented and amazing people. Over thanksgiving weekend Sophie was busy taking photos for three different families at camp. She is a photo journalist and is heading back home to South Africa next week, here are some of the family photos she took for us. We are going to miss Sophie and Cam.



 

 

Thankful

After spending the Thanksgiving weekend surrounded by the awesome people who work here at Frontier Lodge I began to think of all the things I have to be thankful for this past year.  There is probably a million more things I have been thankful for this past year but here are a few that came to mind.

It was this time last fall that God called us to come and work at Frontier Lodge. Through the relatively short time we were hired and began to pack up everything and decided it was best to move right after Christmas, which in hind sight was a bit on the crazy side. While we were moving I was pregnant and God protected our precious Mckaleigh. Thankfulness that she was protected.  When we arrived at the camp there was one of the German guys that was on the maintenance spending Christmas here he spent those first few days we were here thawing the frozen pipe lines. Thankfulness over that for having someone here when we arrived to an unknown place and knowing someone was looking after the water problem.

We are so thankful for our house selling this summer, such a blessing not to be worrying about what is going on with renters or having the house empty and waiting for someone to come along and fall in love with it and decide they want to call it home.

Thankfulness for Joelle and Liam adjusting to camp life faster than expected and honestly faster than I did. I am so thankful for this community of caring people that I have been blessed to be a part of.   

On the note of the caring community I was so thankful for them when Mckaleigh was born, in the middle of the night we needed to go to the hospital and we found David who was up to do the night shift watching the pumps, he spent the night hanging out in our house so when the kids woke up there would be someone here. So thankful that we arrived at the hospital and Mckaleigh was born there and not in the car somewhere along the way. Thank you God for answering that prayer for us. Oh so much thankfulness that she arrived safely and is beautiful and healthy. My heart is so thankful for three beautiful, healthy children that I can kiss good night every night. My heart has broken too many times over the last year for friends and people I know who have spent nights in the hospital with really sick babies or have lost that precious life of their child. It humbles and convicts me to hug them each a little tighter  and a little longer and just let the house work wait because each of those moments are a gift that if you let pass by you never get back and you never know how many of them you will be gifted with.

I have been challenged over the last few days to start a list of thankfulness just to remind me that we have things to be thankful for every day, big ones or small ones there is always something to be thankful for.

Cabin Project

Now that the summer has come to an end and the business of September is over the camp is beginning to feel like it did when we first moved out here in December. The only thing that is different is Troy is now really busy with the cabin projects. In September all the ground work happened and the foundations for the cabins were poured. They had a concrete truck come for an afternoon and a crew of guys took wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of concrete and poured them into the sono tubes.

 Loading up the wheelbarrows with concrete

 Silas, Allen, Cam and Ben pouring the concrete into the sono tube

 Sam and Issac waiting to fill the sono tubes

 Issac, Silas and Cam filling the sono tube

 Troy and Adam

 Allen and Adam



 

 Over the last two weeks the trenching of the utilities have been going on, Liam is in awe with watching what he calls “big big digger” I have also been calling it the big digger and was informed that the proper name of the “digger” is track hoe. Now I am trying to do my best at calling it the proper name so the kids learn the right names of the equipment.  There is still a ways to go with the cabin project in terms of building them and getting enough donations of money, time and materials to make the rest of the project happen on time. If you are interested in donating to this project in any way email Troy at maintenance@frontierlodge.ca to get more information on how you can help.

 Art in the "Big Digger"

 Troy, Cam and Adam

 Art digging the trench

Troy and Adam moving in the water lines

 Troy and Adam

 "Big Big Diggers"

 Liam loving the "big digger"

 Joelle and Liam soo excited to be so close to the "big purple digger"

 Joelle, Liam and Josiah checking out the "big digger"

 We have been blessed by Art who has donated his time and skills to help trench in the utilities

 

A prayer request for this project would be for Troy and the guys who are working on them that they don’t get discouraged during the project. Lots of things can come up in ministry projects like this to cause them to take a bit longer than expected. We are still praying for more money and donations of materials to come in for the cabins.

Pictures from August and September

 Joelle Loves holding Mckaleigh every chance she gets

 

 Mckaleigh at 1 month

 

 Liam and Sonja

 

 Joelle on her first day of pre-school. Liam wanted to go to school too.

 

 Joelle was sooo excited about school!

 

 Two visitors we had outside our house this summer

 

 Mckaleigh's crazy hair!!

 

 Joelle got her hair cut from our good friend Natalie, Joelle is so proud of her new girl hair cut. Any time someone would say they liked her hair cut she would say "it's a girl hair cut"

 Joelle and Natalie.

 

 Joelle picked her outfit. Very proud of herself, cowboy boots, tights, pink shorts, a long sleeve shirt with pink on it and her pink hoodie. Such Style! 

 

 Liam and Troy hiking around by the lake

 

 Joelle and Mckaleigh trying out the winter toques since we have had snow twice already

 

 Liam likes playing with Mckaleigh's toys

 

 Loving the Bumbo

 

 Joelle and Troy chillin' at the movies

 

 Troy and Liam munching on popcorn before the movie Planes started

 

This is what it looks like out here right now, snow on the mountains and the leaves are still turning color. It is really beautiful right now to drive to and from Rocky and through the mountains father west of us. I am not going to lie it is cold out here and have began to dig out all our winter gear and buy boots for the kids in anticipation of the snows arrival and stay for the next 6 months.  Feeling blessed to be living in the mountains and getting to see the beauty that God created out here.

Tough Goodbyes

Working at camp saying good bye to someone at the end of the summer is inevitable. I didn’t really think about it much when we started in January that we would have to say good bye to some of our staff yearly. In the span of a month we said good bye to Cor who was here for over 2 years and looked after the maintenance before Troy worked here, Troy spent a whole day with Cor fixing the water pump in the bottom of the well.  Patricia the young lady I had the privilege to be a mentor to this year.  David was Troy’s assistant this summer and Liam’s maintenance hero.  Johannes was one of Joelle’s and Liam’s best buds to hang out and play with. Janik was one of the first people we met here; when we moved in he spent a few days getting the water pipes unfrozen so Troy could just move in. Claudius was my German little brother; he reminded me a lot of my brother and became a part of our family while he was here. We miss them all, I think the hardest part of saying good bye to this bunch Joelle and Liam still look for them sometimes. It is hard to explain how far away Germany is even when you show them on a map of the world they still think they are coming back to camp. I am sad to say good bye and we  miss them all but I am excited for what God has for each of them in the next chapter of their lives. We fell really blessed to have gotten to know each of them.

Joelle loved hanging out with Cor and borrowing his hat

 

Patricia was such a sweet heart and the kids all loved her and miss her. When the lunch bell rings Joelle still says "Hurry mom Patricia says come, come kids lunch!"

 

David became fast friends with Liam after letting him hold a hammer...best buds since

 

Johannes was one of the kids favorite buds to play with in the dinning hall...they still look for him some days

 

 

Janik was full of great ideas and will make a great leader one day

 

Claudius was my German little brother, had a lot of good talks over coffee and BBQ chicken dinners!

 

WE MISS YOU ALL!

Thank you all for blessing us as we moved to Frontier Lodge, you helped carry boxes, dressers, thawed pipes over Christmas so we could have water again and Troy wouldn't have to do that the first day living here. You took cardboard from our deck as I unpacked. You cooked amazing food for us, you all loved our kids and made them feel at home here. Thank you so much! I miss you all and pray that the next chapters in your lives are filled with fun, adventure, challenges that grow you closer to God. Blessings my friends.

 

 

 

 

 

SOLD!!

How great is our God! We moved out to Frontier Lodge feeling called by God to this ministry with a few things to deal with in Lacombe. Our house was the biggest thing, moving in the winter was not the ideal time to sell so we thought we would rent out the house hoping that would work well. Although we managed to find renters it seemed to cause more stress and frustration. We were driving out to Lacombe more often than we would like to deal with our renters. When they told us they wanted to move out we decided that we are not the land lord type and would just rather sell. When we listed our house we were told that houses were sitting on the market on average just over 100 days. Faced with our house sitting empty that long was not ideal but we were trusting God that he had brought us this far and is more than faithful and things would work out. After being on the market for 38 days we got a conditional offer we accepted. Last night we were told that the conditions had been lifted and we are looking at signing papers at the lawyers this next week! God is so amazing! Thank you for everyone praying for our house. It is kind of cool to think that whoever this guy is that bought out house has no idea how many people have been praying for him to find our house and for everything on his part to go through and how much he is blessing us by buying our house.  God is beyond faithful and his timing is perfect.