Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

In the next few days you will be receiving a special mailing giving the details of our congregation’s participation in a capital campaign in support of Camp Krislund, one that will afford new opportunities for both young people and adults. Our Session has challenged us to raise the goodly sum of $50,000 as our share of the $2 million dollar Funding the Future Campaign to enhance this wonderful place nestled in the hills near State College.

Each year boys and girls from Market Square and other Presbyterian Churches are dropped off for a week in the woods away from home. In many cases this is the first time they have been so far from home without a parent close at hand.

At week’s end they come home both exhausted and exhilarated by the young people and counselors they have lived with ever so closely—and they do not soon forget the exciting and challenging programs they have experienced.

This entire effort to focus on the needs and opportunities facing Camp Krislund has taken me on a sentimental journey back to Camp Twelve Pines in Central New York. During my junior high years this was the place where I experienced some of the stirrings that ultimately led to a call to the pastoral ministry.

I would never suggest that it was an open and shut experience of God’s call when I was twelve or thirteen, but I can distinctly remember taking my stick and offering a prayer along with my campmates and then tossing it into the campfire as a symbol of the light of Christ’s Spirit working in our lives. What began as a casual tossing of a stick ended up being a moment when time stood still for just a second or two. I went home with new ideas and new questions about where my life might take me.

It is in such moments that our lives are shaped and formed into the adults we finally become. It’s a process that never ends, and Church Camps like Krislund are vital to the spiritual health of our young people and all the rest of us who make up Christ’s Church. I hope you will give generously, and that you will pray wholeheartedly for the staff and young people who are going to Krislund this coming summer—including a dozen or so from Market Square.

Mark Englund-Krieger, the Executive Presbyter of Carlisle Presbytery, will be our preacher on Sunday, May 4 as we kick off our Krislund campaign. I ask that you make every effort to be in church on the 4th or to listen in on AM 960.

Faithfully,

Jim Brown