Pine Cove Executive Director, Mario Zandstra, called Trey
Hill five years ago and said, "Trey, we'd like to figure out a way to partner
with you guys." Partnering always sounds so business-like to me.
When one organization partners with another
organization, I've always considered it a theoretical way of
connecting names with one another to have something to show on an annual
report. Oh how misguided I've been!
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Each year, Pine Cove Outback adds an extra week to their
summer camp to give hundreds of Mercy Street kids the opportunity to experience
the thrills of camp all to themselves. As our buses pull into the camp
grounds located in Columbus, Tx, hundreds of counselors (exhausted from an
entire summer of service) are jumping up and down and cheering wildly to
welcome our kids from the city. They pursue each and every student
throughout the week and do everything in their power to make sure each person
feels uniquely special and infinitely loved by both their camp counselor and
Creator.
That one week of experiencing the tangible love of Christ
from such a selfless staff--not to mention the excitement of ziplines and late
night pool parties and campfires in such a beautiful setting--was enough to
begin changing my view of the "impersonal partnership". But the
personal impact of Pine Cove on the lives of our individual students has gone
so much deeper than I imagined. Sarah Koch, the counselor for our senior
girls cabin, has continually texted and written the girls in her cabin throughout
the year to encourage them and tell them she was praying for them. She's
also begged me (the one who assumed camp counselors forgot the names of all
their kids after a week back in every-day-life) to bring them to College
Station so they could share life with her and her roommates at A&M.
The girls and I took the road trip this past weekend and
were welcomed once again by a screaming Sarah on the verge of excitement-filled
tears. She bought everyone tickets to attend the campus-wide Songfest, where
we watched all the different sororities compete in a dance competition.
She stayed up late and cooked breakfast and spent her entire weekend
laughing with us, encouraging us, overflowing with warmth and
hospitality.
Triana, Ikea, Summer, Laura and I will never forget our
weekend with Sarah. It turns out partnerships are another way of saying,
"We want to merge our lives with your lives so that the love of Jesus
might be tangibly expressed in a more intimate way than way than it could be if
we went about our service in isolation." The girls and I are
dripping with gratitude for Sarah Koch, for Mario Zandstra, and for every other
Pine Cover who has chosen to share life with us. How Christ must beam
when He sees His people joining hands across cultures to serve Him in unity, as
one family.
