Saturday, December 28, 2013

Donation for Special Olympics


Justin Steiner’s mom helps with the vacation bible school at her church.  Each year the children give tithe money that is donated to a specific cause.  Last summer the vacation bible schoolers at Country Bible Church gave the collected money to Camp Daniel for The Able Church’ Special Olympics team .  The Able Attack team needed new basketball uniforms, but without help, couldn’t afford to buy them.   The wonderful people in the picture above collected $767 for the Special Olympics.  We are always very thankful when others help out.  What a blessing!  One of the Able basketball teams is shown in the top picture wearing the new uniforms.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Special Events OFF the Camp Daniel campus.

 Last Saturday was the state level competition for  Special Olympics.  Some of the Able Attack athletes advanced to this level, and were able to make the trip to Milwaukee to compete against athletes from all over the state.  We are very proud of all of the athletes this season!

The photo to the left features our two bowlers, Darlene and Tina.  They competed at two different levels, so they weren’t competing against each other.  Darlene placed 8th, and Tina brought home a third place medal.
One of the Able Attack’s two volleyball teams competed at the state level last weekend.  The guys won a silver!   Back row from the left:  Nate, Joey, Nick and   Trevor.  Bottom row from left:  Brian, Billy and Coach Roger Wied
Nick Sterry was baptized on Sunday in a wonderful ceremony at Living Hope Church.  
Yes...he cried.
We are all so blessed to have Nick in the Kingdom and in our lives!

The last picture is from the Ecumenical group that Jen, Trish, Marceaux and Jake participate in.     It is a Bible study for people with disabilities that is held every other Monday in Marinette.  Their Christmas program included a bell choir, like we do at camp and at Able Church.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Holidays at Camp Daniel.

 The Friday before Thanksgiving, The Able Church holds its annual Thanksgiving dinner.  The turnout is always good.  Check out the food in the pic and you’ll know why!  This year approximately 140 people were in attendance for the service and dinner.
Thanks to the many many people that worked together to make the night special.  The Able Church is blessed to have such wonderful volunteers.  I won’t even attempt to name everyone, because I don’t want to miss any!
Also a special thanks to those that drive people to and from Able Church each week.  What a dedicated and serving group.
 The Christmas season is well underway here at Camp Daniel.  The Hartley House tree and decorations were put up this week.  Richard, Nick, Brian, Justin, Steve, Nick Sterry, Anthony and Karol all pitched in to transform the Hartley House for Christmas.
The tree is a tall one, even Nick had to use a chair to reach the top!

Of course, lots of other things are happening around the grounds. Like the official start of the Shoveling Season!  Unfortunately this first snowfall had to be handled a bit old school the first day, as the riding snow blower was out of gas the first day and the plow truck was in the shop!  Marceaux did make a gas run on Wed, and Trish was then able to train Nick Sterry on using the riding snow blower.  Since the truck was still gone, he had a large job of clearing sidewalks and as much roadway as he could.  We did finally get the truck back, but remaining snow is now solid ice.  Praying for some warmer weather that can melt said ice before the next
 snowfall. (And for a regular snow blower that can fit where the riding one cannot.)

Tony and the guys are still putting things away in the tool room in the garage.  Karol and Tony have gotten in a couple of days on “The Factory”, (the craft cabin.)  It’s getting close to completion!
Molly has been working on the Christmas cards that we send to campers.  She is now also in charge of lining up the worship leader for each Friday at Able Church.  She has also been working with the Special Olympics teams.  The fall season sports are finishing up this weekend with State level competition, and the winter sports have been practicing for several weeks.  Those tournaments will start soon.  Molly is learning from Jen all about the ins and outs of running the Special Olympics teams.  There’s so much involved, but she’s doing great so far.
Marceaux has been working on the vehicles around camp, and getting things ready for winter.
Steve and Nick worked with Karol again this week on tiling.  Hopefully, that will be done next week.  Before we know it, everyone will be leaving for the holidays!

Monday, December 2, 2013

This and That

 The missionaries at Camp Daniel have been plugging away at many projects as of late.  Helping them with the progress has been Dave Detloff.  Dave has put in many hours doing volunteer construction at Camp Daniel.  Dave is responsible for just about all of the tongue and groove and trim in the dorms.  Lately he has been at other jobs around the campus.  He worked with the guys putting up many gutters and downspouts on multiple buildings.  Last week, he started working on the stall walls in the bathrooms of Trapline Lodge dorm.  You can see in the first photo that he trimmed out the posts, and built the dividing wall.  He is also hanging the doors, which have to cut down to a smaller
 length, fitted with hinges and doorknobs and installed.
The second photo shows where Dave had the guys bring inside the tongue and groove that he will install in the 4th cabin (dorm room).  Inside in can stay dry and get some preliminary sanding.  Richard, Nick and Brian started sanding the boards over the weekend.  I think it’ll be a big job to get them all done.
 The ceiling in the 4th dorm bathroom hadn’t been plastered previously, as this room was being used for tool storage.  So after all the tools were moved to the garage, Tony and Richard plastered the ceiling and upper walls.  After it was thoroughly dry, Nick and Steve received a quick tutorial on painting by Karol, then painted the areas with primer and 2 coats of paint.
 We are almost done tiling in the last two bathrooms. One bath is grouted as much as possible, while the other will be grouted soon.  It’s a job that we do with as many hands as possible.  Before Thanksgiving, those working on grouting were, Steve, Nick, Molly, Jen, Trish, Karol and the guys.  We have a decent system down now, so hopefully the last bathroom will only take one or two days.
 The picture on the right shows the “after” of the new temporary workroom that’s attached to the garage.  After the items were moved there, Tony and the guys spent many hours going through every box and crate.  They organized and threw away that which isn’t useful anymore.  That’s the one plus side to this stuff being moved so much...it gets more organized and well labeled with each move!
After the last newsletter, Camp Daniel received money for new garbage cans for the recycling center.  Last week, Tony bought the new cans and after talking with the guys about which cans get filled the most, he labeled the 12 cans.  Now we will have enough room for all of the recycling items, without cans overflowing or tipping over!

Monday, November 25, 2013

Bell Choir

A few Sundays ago, the Camp Daniel staff and many from the Able Church, were proud to be invited
 to the United Methodist Church in Oconto.  The invite was specifically for the bell choir.  The service featured two different bell choir songs.  The first one featured Camp Daniel and Able supporters, but for the second number, we invited those from the congregation to join in.  You can see that in the second pic.  The pastor was also gracious enough to give Tony 10 minutes to present Camp Daniel.  Wow.  He can really talk fast when he needs to.  He covered the history of CD, summer camps, the grounds, Able Church, how you can help and our philosophy of disability ministry!  It is a super friendly church, and they were very responsive.  We were even invited back again another time.
After the service the church put on a wonderful potluck dinner, during which we were able to get to know the pastor and some others from the congregation better.
Thanks goes out to Judy Schuessler, for organizing and being the middle man in all of this.  Also, thanks to all those who participated.  We were very excited at the excellent turnout!

We are also excited to continue the relationship forged with this congregation.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Going back to October...

Going back a bit in time for today’s blog.  Camp Daniel hosted a work day Oct 26th.  While leaves were being raked outside, Karol was working inside on the frosted glass for The Factory’s front door.  First, a design was made with specialized computer software.  The design features The Factory in a stencil font with different shapes and sizes of gears arranged around the perimeter.  Then the design was cut out of vinyl with the digital cutter machine.  The positive elements were pealed away leaving a sticky vinyl stencil.  The stencil ( in green in the pic to the right) was firmly applied to the door.  Then the areas of the door around the window were all taped off, so that the spray on etching could be applied in several light layers.


Here’s the end result!
We are still working on The Factory.  When it’s all done, we will do a post showing the progression of the project.  So look for that in the next few weeks!
A group from The Able Church comes to Camp Daniel each fall for a work day of raking leaves.  We really appreciate their dedication and support. Not only did they get all the fallen leaves raked, but they also did  some other outdoor projects.  They shoveled gravel into wheel barrels and moved the rock to Trapline Lodge, where many hands were at work putting in a length of plastic garden edging, weed barrier, and finally gravel.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Last Work Day for Fall 2013

 Last Friday and Saturday, Camp Daniel hosted it's last official work days for the year 2013.  We were blessed to have multiple groups involved in the many projects that were tackled.
Friday afternoon 8 people from Word of Grace church of Sheboygan arrived ready to work.
They started by priming the new/temporary work room.  It's the old shed roofed wood shed on the backside of the garage.  It was enclosed this summer, and the guys have been working hard to get it ready to paint.  While some were busy there,
the rest got a tutorial on how to tile a wall.  Karol and Nick Sterry worked with the volunteers, and working together, they got far.


 When volunteers were working on projects, Trish was busy in the kitchen preparing meals for everyone.  Over the course of the weekend, she served over 120 meals!
On Saturday, a group from Woodland worship Center added to the mix.  We continued with tiling, and after the workroom (which will eventually be a backstage area of the future dining hall) was painted, the crew began to move all of the tools from the dorm.  
An additional group started on the tongue and groove on the ceiling of the Hartley House porch.  This is a job that we've wanted to have done for quite a while.  As you can see in the pic above, they had a good system going with the guys using the nailers to install the wood, while the ladies' were in charge of measuring and cutting.  This was a big job that will have to be finished in the spring.

Below, is Tony really pondering something profound, or is he just trying to figure out why the tile doesn't go the edge of the wall?


Overall, this workday finished out the season with a bang.  We were very happy with how many different things were done.  We had as many as 35 people working at once! That takes a lot of coordination and preliminary work, but when it's all done, there's few things more rewarding than seeing how much was accomplished.
THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE VOLUNTEERED AT THE CAMP DANIEL GROUNDS THIS FALL!!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Pumpkin Carving

 While this blog generally covers the work done on the Camp Daniel grounds, I thought it would be a nice change to show the Camp Daniel family taking some time off for fun.  Trish had the great idea to do a pumpkin carving night complete with snacks and apple cider.
 So the Camp Daniel missionaries and good friends, Rudie Koch and the Cleereman family all brought their pumpkins to the Hartley House where Trish had two long tables set up for carving.
                                                                                                                                                                 
 Leave it to a guy to feel the need to pull out the power tools to carve a jack-o-lantern!  We were debating whether Marceaux was cheating, or showing us his genius.
an MJ size pumpkin.

Molly and Justin were such a cute couple, as they took 2 hours to carve a pumpkin together.  Justin probably got a sore neck because he had the little carving knife in his teeth and was sawing back and forth.  They made a minion which is super cute.

At Camp Daniel, we try really hard to succeed in living in community.  It's not always easy, as we have many different personalities, but it's times like this that bring us all together again.  And it's very easy to just keep on working, working, working, and forget about taking time out for fellowship and fun.  So I thank Trish again, for being such a great asset to the Camp Daniel missionary family.

If you'd like to see more pics of the festivities, and the finished pumpkins, check out some of the facebook posts from Annissa and Trish.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Camp Daniel

Winter is soon coming! It started to snow here yesterday, and guess what? A little bit stayed on the ground for about fifteen minutes! Pretty soon we'll have a foot of snow! Well, we all know what holiday is in winter, Christmas! Everybody loves getting Christmas cards from friends and family. Molly has been writing Christmas cards to send out to each camper! She also puts a picture of everybody that was in their cabin that week.

Another thing that comes around this time of year is the Camp Daniel newsletters get sent out! Molly, Justin, Karol, and Trish spent the afternoon on Wednesday putting address labels on all of the newsletters! After that was done, Trish and Jen brought them to the post office.


As well as the newsletters, Tony and Karol have been working really hard on the craft cabin! It has come a really long way. They have been working day and night, and it looks great!


The Able Attack's first volleyball tournament is next Saturday! This past summer, Justin's home church raised money in their VBS program for new uniforms for the team. Justin and Jen have been working together to buy new uniforms. They look really awesome! We will put a picture on here when they are delivered.

Justin has also been working with Pastor Tim to create an Able Church website! It has been a very long process, but it will be done soon! All that's left is putting the pictures in where they need to go!

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Camp Daniel Update

It's getting colder and colder each day here at Camp Daniel. The leaves keep on falling and winter is coming fast! Since all of the leaves are falling, that means the grounds are covered in them. Well, Trish needed to mow the grass one last time before winter arrives but couldn't because of all the leaves. So, for in order for Trish to mow the grass, Nick, Steve, Trish, and the guys went around and raked some leaves. Now, in the last blog post, we said that the Able Church would rake when they came up for a workday. But don't worry! There are still plenty of leaves to be raked!

Tony and Tim Mandich went to Indianapolis for a Disability Leadership Conference this week. So, when Tony was gone, Nick, Steve, and the guys put up drywall and plastered the seams in the new addition on the garage. They spent a couple of days working on that. It's looking pretty good! When it is finished, we are going to move the tool room down the so we can finish the Trapline Lodge.

After they did that, they went up to the work room and cleaned it. It was really dirty!


Who remembers Messy Games? Who can forget, right? Well, do you remember at the end of Messy Games the is a huge water fight? Well, all of those squirt guns needed to be cleaned out, and somebody had to figure out which ones didn't work anymore. Justin and Molly spent a whole day cleaning, drying, and sorting through all of the water guns! There was only a handful of them that didn't work.

Tony and Karol have been continuously working on the blueprints for the Dining Hall/Kitchen. There have been a total of fourteen rough drafts in sixteen years! Well, they have finished what they hope to be he last one! And it is amazing!

Monday, October 14, 2013

October 12th Camp Daniel Workday!

We had another workday on Saturday up here at Camp Daniel! We had quite a few people come up. Seeing as it is Autumn, that means there are a LOT of leaves that are falling off the trees. Somebody has to rake them, right? Well, that's what one group of people did...rake leaves. A lot. And even thought they raked a lot, there are still plenty of leaves that still need to be raked! (Maybe a job for the Able Church Workday?!)

While they were walking around camp raking leaves, another group was up in the Trapline Lodge plastering and tiling the walls. This group included Becca and Shelly Risner, one of their friends, Don Richmond, Steve, and Nick Stonelake. They did a great job!




While they were doing that, Lilly Howe and her Dad, Richard, Nick Sterry, and Jake were in the new addition of the garage plastering the walls! 

But wait, there's more! (This is a big workday!) Tim Mandich came up to the work day and worked with two more people and put up a small retaining wall continuing from the existing one down by Tony's office. This was a VERY dusty job! They had to cut the concrete stones to make them all fit next to each other.


And don't forget about the craft cabin! They took out all of the drawers and cabinet doors so Karol can sand them and get them painted.



After the workday, there was another Camp Daniel Counselor Meeting which we have here every second Tuesday of every month. Not as many people showed up to this one, but there was still a good turnout! On Saturday night, we talked about our favorite movie and how it affected us spiritually. Comment your answer below! We'd like to hear from you!