Things Camp Needs• 16 Schwinn cruiser/coaster bikes• 15 Heavy-duty camping cots• 12 Amish outdoor rockers• 3 Garden carts• 20 Multi-colored stackable Adirondack chairs• 10 Archery bow & arrow sets

For complete needs list go to www.lutherhaven.com/stuff-we-really-need

Dear Camp Friend,ONE HOT LATE SPRING DAY back in June, 1974—45 years ago—a slightly (okay, considerably) nervous and slightly (okay, considerably) gangly 18 year-old just-outta-high-school-grad pulled up in back of the dining hall at L.G. Cook 4-H Camp in Beemerville (yep, Beemerville,) New Jersey, in his baby blue ’72 Mustang.

It was his first day of summer camp staff training, his first week with that baby blue ’72 Mustang, his first all-summer-away-from-home, his first time ever at (that particular) summer camp.

HE WASN’T SURE why he was even at that camp. His girlfriend applied to be a camp counselor, so naturally, he did, too. (She’d been a camper at Cook since about forever.) He got hired. She didn’t. (And she never quite forgave him.) He found his bunk and unpacked his duffel, uneasy about what the next ten weeks would bring. Thankfully, sitting next to him at dinner, were two strangers who would come to be lifelong friends.

Weekly busloads of excited campers would begin to arrive in just two weeks. Oh my! Before that, there were cabins to open up and mattresses to air. There was lifeguard training down at the lake, treading for five minutes together in

chilly June lake water, holding big rocks overhead. There were miles of trails to explore; the dish machine and horse barns and crafts’ shack to navigate; songs and skits and ancient camp traditions to learn.

SO BEGAN THE FUN, adventure and memories of a lifetime. Those three strangers at that table the first night—MaryLou from Kentucky, Jimmy from Philly, and me—returned three more summers as counselors and then program directors. Through college, career and family life, we’d remain camp besties.

IT’S 45 YEARS LATER, thirty-one of them “camp years” for me. In just a few short weeks 70-some summer staff will arrive here, for some of them their first all-summer-away-from-home, their first time ever at Lutherhaven, their first time ever at summer camp, even.

Complete strangers will sit together around dinner tables that first night, unaware that one or two across the table or across the room might just become lifelong friends. They’ll spend two weeks treading water and learning the trails, dish machines, horse barns, songs, skits, and ancient traditions—73 summers-worth—of Lutherhaven Ministries.

Then two thousand campers will come and go, spread out over the next eight weeks. Oh my! And before camper and camp staff alike even discover how life-changing it really is, they’ll find their bunks, unpack their duffels, and join together in all the fun, all the adventures, all the memories of a Lutherhaven summer!

THANKS FOR BEING SO VITAL IN THAT! Your generous gifts of time, prayer and finances continue to bring Lutherhaven to the place it is today, among the best Christian camps in the nation. From all of us at Lutherhaven Ministries, we wish you and your family and friends a very, very blessed Easter!

(And oh, if I only had back that ’72 baby blue…)

Your servant in Jesus,

Bob Baker, Executive Director

The occasional newsletter from Lutherhaven Ministries | Coeur d’Alene, IdahoVolume 73, Issue 1, April 15, 2019

Volunteer.ORGANIZE A

THRIVENT ACTION TEAM

To trigger all sorts of fun and needed projects around camp!

Contact Coral for ideas...or with your idea!

208.667.3459 ext. 119coral@lutherhaven.com

Pray.PRAY for the Board and Staff

of Lutherhaven Ministries.

PRAY for the health and safety of campers, guests, staff and

volunteers; that Lutherhaven camp programs are safe and life changing.

PRAY in thanksgiving for all God’s creation; the vast expanse of the sky,

the mountains, trees, lake and streams.

Give Thanks. Praise the Lord for grant funds to

support programs & improve facilities.

2019 GRANTS AWARDEDMJ Murdock Charitable Trust

Shoshone Dining Hall Renovation$175,000

ELCA: Always Being Made New Urban ISA & The Confirmation Project

$40,000

Lutherhaven Ministries3258 West Lutherhaven RoadCoeur d’Alene, ID 83814

208.667.3459www.lutherhaven.cominfo@lutherhaven.com

NON-PROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDCDA, ID

PERMIT NO. 16 Thanks & GivingSPRING NEWS FROM THE HEART OF CAMP

Save the Date for Boots & Pearls!A Lutherhaven Hootenanny with a Purpose

SATURDAY, AUGUST 24www.lutherhaven.com/boots-pearls

The Historic McPherson Meadows PropertyPaul WiersmaALWAYS SHOWING UP

INNOVATOR. COMEDIAN. GRANDPA. BEER ENTHUSIAST. ANSWER TO PRAYERS. ROCKSTAR VOLUNTEER.

Since 1996, Paul Wiersma has been showing up to help. Riding his scooter from Spokane to Camp Lutherhaven in the wee early morning hours, Paul has played a major role in all of camp’s construction projects over the past two decades.

Paul showed up for months for the Retreat Center remodel at Camp Lutherhaven, even dangling in a harness from a safety rope to tear the old roof off, rain or shine. These days Paul shows up every Monday to work on the Dining Hall remodel at Shoshone Mountain Retreat, and shares his engineer’s perspective on how to best support or reinforce this or that adequately to make things safe, without going overboard. Paul and wife Marjorie show up at camp’s Boots & Pearls event every year to donate and pour Big Barn Brewing’s finest ales. Whatever, whenever, wherever the need, Paul shows up.

With a friendly smile and a kind heart, Paul is an example for us all of Ephesians 2:10 “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Thanks, Paul, for always showing up for camp!

Americorps NCCC PartnershipAMERICORPS AT LUTHERHAVENLutherhaven is thrilled to have been selected for the third year running to partner with AmeriCorps NCCC, a national team-based program for young adults, age 18-24. AmeriCorps strengthens hundreds of communities around the United States, developing young leaders through service projects and life experience.

Lutherhaven’s third AmeriCorps team arrives this spring and stays through mid-July. Our ten Corps members will serve at both Camp Lutherhaven and Shoshone Mountain Retreat, leading Outdoor Education programs for grade school students and facilitating Idaho Servant Adventures projects across the Silver Valley this summer. AmeriCorps provides Lutherhaven with nearly 4000 staff hours at no cost to camp.

Approximately 2,200 members serve in AmeriCorps NCCC and FEMA Corps each year, assisting community and faith-based based organizations, national nonprofits, schools, local municipalities, national and state parks, and Indian tribes. Lutherhaven’s team comes to us fresh from southern California, where they constructed 10 homes in Desert Hot Springs and supported after school program-ming. We are so blessed to be part of the AmeriCorps NCCC family!

Shoshone Dining Hall Renovation UPDATE! PROJECT DESCRIPTION Since purchasing the camp from the U.S. Forest Service in 2009 in a one-of-a-kind federal land sale requiring two acts of Congress, a major undertaking at Shoshone Mountain Retreat has been “flipping” it from utilitarian Forest Service work center to cozy Christian youth and family camp and retreat.

The project includes:

1. Doubling the footprint of the building so every camper can eat indoors.

2. New wastewater infrastructure for 2 primary camp buildings.

3. Adding public, accessible bathrooms where none currently exist.

4. Modernizing & improving the size, flow & functionality of the kitchen.

5. Turning the building into the central, signature gathering place on camp.

CHOW TIME CAMPAIGN$284,000 Building$47,500 Outdoor Spaces$44,000 Kitchen Renovation + Equipment$28,000 Furnishings$25,000 Septic- Engineering, Installation$10,000 10% materials contingency$458,500 SUBTOTAL+$130,000 FMV Staff & Volunteer Labor$588,500 TOTAL PROJECT COST

PROGRESS REPORTWe’re about 80% of the way to meeting our fundraising goal with $100,000 left to raise to guarantee the Shoshone Dining Hall is complete and ready for use come summer of 2020!

Volunteers have already logged nearly 200 hours this spring and a crew is lined up to set trusses Mid-May. In the words of grateful project manager Steve Meyer, “Nice work, God—moving people to move mountains!”

A GENEROUS GIFT FROM RAY & ELEANOR GRANNISBack in 1920, 20 year-old Frank McPherson filed to homestead 160 acres at the confluence of Tepee Creek and the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. Frank hunted, fished, raised hay and wintered mules on quarter-mile wide, mile-long homestead, making his living trapping, building Forest Service Trails, working the log drives out of Big Creek Camp—what’s now Lutherhaven’s Shoshone Mountain Retreat—and occasionally pulling the big trade barges upriver from Prichard with his team of mules. In 1928 Frank began work on his big log cabin in McPherson Meadows, hand hewing timbers killed in the 1910 Big Burn and single-handedly setting the logs in place, using just a mule team and block and tackle.

70 years later McPherson’s historic cabin and outbuildings would get moved log by log down-river by teams of high school volunteers and reassembled at Lutherhaven’s Shoshone Creek Ranch. The cabin and barns were a gift to Lutherhaven from Ray and Eleanor Grannis of Coeur d’Alene, who’d purchased the main parcel of McPherson’s old homestead in 1980 from Frank’s estate. The McPherson Cabin now serves proudly as the main lodge for Lutherhaven’s summer Shoshone Creek Ranch program.

Late in December, 2019, Ray and Eleanor made an even more astounding legacy gift to Lutherhaven Ministries—their 25 acres on TePee Creek at McPherson Meadows—for forever use by Lutherhaven by kids, youth, adults and families!

The beautiful parcel is off-grid, at pavement’s end, and surrounded by timbered peaks. It sits on a world class cutthroat trout fishery at a trailhead of the Coeur d’Alene River National Scenic Recreation Trail.

Lutherhaven is forever grateful to Ray and Eleanor for their incredible generosity, and especially for their heart for getting kids outdoors into the beauty of God’s creation! Old Frank McPherson, way back when, left his homestead to benefit kids. Today, almost forty years later, the Grannis family is bringing that all the way back around, to bless generations of young people to come!

Lutherhaven’s first Americorps team. Summer 2017 Staff Training

DONOR LEVELSDonors are recognized on a tree slice branded with your name on the Donor Wall in honor of your contribution to the project.

Grand Fir

$10,000+ (15-18” slice)

Cedar

$1000+ (8-10” slice)

PonderosaPine

$100+ (3-5” slice)

WANT TO GET INVOLVED?VOLUNTEER

Email steve@lutherhaven.comDONATE

www.lutherhaven.com/give