St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

By Steve Rucinski. (Note: Scroll down and read the last article, I added some photos)

Today we worked on a project called ‘Kaboom’ which is an organization that facilitates the building of community parks as a way of building stronger communities. This is day one of this cool project where in four days with the help of hundreds of volunteers a massive park system is built. There is a section for 2-5 year olds and one for kids 6+ years old.

The site was busy with activity upon our arrival (a little late due to some paperwork issues) we helped to make signs, cut wood for picnic tables, sorted materials into kits for future assembly teams, built forms for concrete posts and anything else we were asked to do.

At one point there was easily over 50 volunteers on-site. Many of the volunteers were adult groups from different companies who participate with the Kaboom organization. Come Saturday and Sunday there will be over 300 volunteers on site doing final equipment assembly. We have been told that the playground will be featured on Good Morning America on Monday morning June 16. You might want to check it out!

We got done a little early today and back at camp around 3 pm so we took the kids down to the beach to swim, it was low tide so even those of us with shoes could wander out on the evident sandbars. A quick note about the beach here, the sand is great but the water is kind of murky and there are many mini-stingrays on the bottom which means you need to shuffle your feet as you go out to scare them off. Remember this water is a “Bay” and not the gulf directly so not much wave action.

We had a dinner of Fajitas which everyone seemed to enjoy. At the reflection service a group from Huntsville who was here in the first camp in 2006 did a presentation of pictures they captured that first year. In speaking with the group they did exclusively debris removal from home sites. Much of that debris was personal belongings and they would build an ‘altar’ of those belongings on the site so if the owner returned they could find some of their items. Great presentation and a moving story!y

After the reflection service we went to the beach and had a bonfire with our Toledo brethren, St. Michael’s. Peggy the co-Rector made up a nice little service and set of prayers that spawned some interesting discussion among our teams. Then we dived into the making of smores with gusto. The fire was really hot (Great job by Bob and Ray) and making a smore almost meant losing your eyebrows. I think a good time was had by all, we arrived back at camp at 10:30 just in time for lights out. (Sorry no campfire pictures, it is Ray’s fault for not giving me any of the thousands he took of the outing)