Makeshift dining room 1970 when it rained on our outdoor dining room!
“I will lead the
blind by a way they do not know, in paths they do not know I will guide them
and I will make darkness into light before them and rugged places into
plains. These are the things I will do,
and I will not leave them undone.” (Isa. 32:16).
Hey Gang: When God
called my family to leave our home, jobs, church and friends in California and
come to Michigan I believe I felt a lot like Abraham must have felt when God
told him to pack it all up and “Go forth
from your country to a land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1).
It was our firm belief that God was leading
us to the Eagle Community, north of Clare, to move into a farmhouse and take
four young lads that needed specialized care and prepare them to return home or
foster care. In the very early stages of
what we felt was our mission of four boys at a time, the local judges said we
need much more than four beds.
The nearly two years of agony and pain, waiting for the Lord
to open the door, seemed like wasted time, BUT
we learned, after the final dot was dotted and the Eagle Boys Village became a
legal entity, that God had prepared our hearts and spirits for the rope burns
to come, in keeping up with the rapid development and growth of the
programs. And I emphasize –
PROGRAMS.
We were advised, by those who were in the know, to begin a
program for delinquent children was more than a full cup to bear, and to add a
second program at the same time was deemed to be foolish indeed. Shortly after the papers were signed
creating the Village, a call was received from a judge with a plea – “We have
kids on the streets that need to be off the streets for the long hot summer –
can you do anything to help while your first house is being built?” My first
response was “But I…!”
God finished the “But I” will, If you trust. I, God,
will supply your every need!” A
promise that we tested that summer with every ounce of grit that was in our
hearts and souls. When people asked why,
we said, “It just seemed like the right thing to do!”. Never having been in a camp setting, I did
not have a clue where one begins to develop such an entity. But, I had an advisor who knew all about such
things and advised me every step of the way.
His name is “Jehovah GOD”.
With less than a month to go from scratch to a full-fledged
camp, bordered on the impossible. Any
normal person would have given a big fat ‘no’ but, as I learned later, we were
far from normal in the development of what was to be the path chosen for us. Now think about that for a moment. We had a beautiful property, a tiny cottage,
and a large cement block building- and that was the sum-total of our
assets.
It would take many pages to describe what happened in that
month following our decision “Yes, we will go for it!”, but will restrict this
to the very, very short version. We
learned very rapidly that our plan, which had been hastily drafted in very
short form on a date planner, would never be completed and has not been since
that day in May 1969, but when we greeted our first campers, that summer, we
were ready to meet the challenge – we thought!
That first summer we had more than eighty young, very active
boys for two to ten weeks; these youth had more than one hundred police
contacts the year that brought them to our door. We had nothing to work with, no facilities, a
green staff of several young college students and a retired couple. God did a
mighty work through this group of people who did not how to run a camp but
whose hearts oozed with a love and compassion for this group of troubled young
folks.
In the year following that first camp, we learned that same
group of kids compiled two misdemeanor police contacts the next year. This
resulted in our first major change in what we thought was to be our mission
statement. The results of that first
camp, built with blood, sweat and buckets of tears became a permanent piece of
what was to happen on that property in the wilderness and can only be described
as a miracle.
I think I will expand on this epistle in the next blog
because I want you to see what God can do with a person who had such limited
experience and knowledge about what God can do when we are willing. Today, as I write this epistle, there are
more than two hundred children under Village care now attached to the shirt-tail
offered beginning on that day in May 1969, when the first five boys arrived on
campus. It was a camp that put together with bailing wire, Elmer’s glue, a roll
or two of “Duck Tape, hard work and a few prayer warriors.
Tune in tomorrow and see the next step in God’s miracle
called Eagle Boys Village.
Blessings,
Gramps
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