Where does Lake Ann camp?

It’s pretty well known that campers come to Lake Ann Camp from some pretty distant places.  What may be less well known is that Lake Ann Camp also brings camp to some pretty distant places.  For many years, Lake Ann Camp has accepted invitations to engage in Christian camp training and consulting internationally.  The camp accepts these invitations humbly and prayerfully with the goal of multiplying effective camping ministries across cultures and settings.  We know that camp ministry models will evidence great variety in the development of culturally sensitive, effective, and appropriate practices.  Still, in the midst of this variety, Lake Ann Camp is committed to fostering camp ministries that reflect the core of what makes Lake Ann Camp so effective.

Our posture in training and consulting relationships is one of accompaniment and stewardship.  It is not our intention to create Lake Ann Camp clones.  We recognize that we also benefit from these relationships as we sharpen the focus of our philosophy and gain cultural insight to our own blind spots.  In our training and consulting we focus on the development of key camp leaders and staff.  In many contexts, the key staff are volunteers.  We engage our own full-time staff and interns to demonstrate camp principles and equip our ministry partners to develop sustainable camp models.

This year we have accepted an invitation to a new country for us.  We will be traveling to Cuba and beginning work with new partners there.  Cuba is a country in transition and uncertainty.  Since the revolution of 1959, the country has been under restrictive communist rule.  In recent years, U.S.-Cuban relations have thawed, but there are many unknowns about the future.  Meanwhile, the gospel has been spreading at an unprecedented pace in Cuba.  There is a spiritual hunger and a readiness to respond to the life-changing truth of the gospel.  Lake Ann Camp has been invited to send personnel who will facilitate Cuban volunteers from an association of churches in running a new camping initiative.  The first phase of this ministry development will be the training of leaders and programming for a day-camp experience for children.  Our team will be in Cuba for one full week this April.

We fund our cross-cultural training and consulting through gifts and offerings given by our campers and by other support connections.  Because of this generosity, we are able to engage in this ministry without cost to our partners.  We do not provide funding for the general operation of our partners, nor do we raise funds for special projects such as the construction of buildings.  We focus our efforts on multiplying our knowledge of camping philosophy and training for the advancement of Biblical, life-changing camp ministry around the world.  Pray with us in these efforts.