Living River

Thursday night while I was sitting at Gulftreat thinking about all of my memories of camping at Gulftreat, I felt the need to share my story. So, I typed the following email and sent it to the Fundraising committee for the new Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley camp 'Living River'. I thought I would share it with all:

From Elementary Camp to Hurricane Katrina
Camping in the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley

My first memories of camp are as a young elementary aged kid at Gufltreat. My dad was the Youth Pastor at FPC, Selma and he was leading a Work Camp of Senior Highs while my little brother, my mom, and I tagged along and called it a ‘family vacation’. A few years later, we moved from Selma to Atlanta. Even after we moved I attended Elementary and Middle School Summer camp at Gulftreat instead of attending Cherokee Presbytery’s Camp. My dad also began to bring the youth group from Marietta to Gulftreat for weekend retreats and spring break trips. During college, I worked at Gulftreat as a camp counselor and helped lead day camps in Wilcox County, Anniston, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa. I also helped plan and attended many college retreats at Gulftreat. After I married Morgan, we began to bring her youth group to Gulftreat for Presbytery retreats and we even had a ‘family vacation’ of our own here. Now I am at Gulftreat helping victims of Hurricane Katrina live here and start to put their lives back together.

As you can tell, Gulftreat holds a special place in my heart. I have a lifetime of memories in these old cinder block buildings and I am only 27 years old. I have cried, laughed, sang, shouted, worked, prayed, and played here. I have spent the last week helping to fixing all of the hundreds of things that are broken and not working in these old, old buildings. Even though I see the state of this camp and my head tells me that everything is broken and beyond repair, my heart still hurts to know that it is time to move on.

I know there are many other people that have similar stories about Gulftreat and have similar feelings about how hard it will be when the time comes to lock it up for the last time. I also know that there are many other people who are ready to shut this place down and build a brand new camp that has everything in the world in it. And then there a lot of people like me who hurt for the loss of Gulftreat but are excited about the possibilities of the new camp on the Cahaba. And this brings me to my point…

All of these people are right. We are ALL right because we (the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley) has for generations made camping a priority in the mission of our church. We have volunteered at camps, given money to camps, built camps, lead camps, attended camps, and prayed for camps and that is truly an amazing thing. There are hundreds of thousands of people who remember Gulftreat or Covenant Mountain or a Day Camp in their own church all because WE have made camping a priority. It is not the place that makes a camp special, regardless of how many good memories you have in that place, it is the people and the presence of the Holy Spirit that make a place special. That is exactly why I KNOW that the Living River Camp on the Cahaba will truly be a place full of the Holy Spirit. We have been given a wonderful opportunity to build a camp in our own backyard that can serve us and our kids hundreds of times more than Gulftreat ever could. So, I challenge you to not only give money to help build this camp, and to not only pray for this camp, and to not only tell more people about this camp, but when this camp is built to send your kids to this camp, send your grandkids to this camp, attend this camp yourself, volunteer at this camp, and make sure you bring the Holy Spirit that is SO alive in our Presbytery and our camping!

Peace,

Robert Hay, Jr.