Camp Bellevue

Basketball Camp is coming! Sign up now at the link in the comment section below.

IMPORTANT! All participants must register on or before July 7th, the registration deadline. If you do not sign up by the deadline, you will be placed on a waiting list and you will only be able to attend if there is a cancellation or no show. Your early registration helps us plan well for food and other supplies. Thank you for understanding.

December newsletter from the Campbell Family

Summer is almost here. Make plans now to attend our summer camps. Don't miss out!

Thank you to Andrea Muirhead from Let's Start Talking Canada for bringing two young men down to Ecuador on their Easter break for a week-long project! We've never had a team come this time of year, and since schools in Ecuador don't give any time off for Easter (other than Good Friday), we had to think creatively about how to put this enthusiastic team to work. They ended up visiting a local school in the morning to help teach English / Science lessons. Then, in the afternoons, they filled in for Kendall, who was away for the week, teaching her English classes at the After School Program. In the evenings, they ran a "mini-English camp" for teens which included dinner, games, and a short bilingual Bible study. We focused on "questions Jesus asked" and had some good discussions around those. Thank you to Andrea, Morris, and Kipton for spending your Easter vacation with us at Camp Bellevue!

At the end of March, we hosted a retreat for homeschool teens. This is the same group that our boys participate in every other week during the school year. We love having this group and seeing all their creative ideas for games and activities. Over the years, we’ve helped them with obstacle courses, trebuchets, a Mystery Dinner, and campfire meals. This year, we got to stage an arrest!

The theme was “The Persecuted Church,” and during the opening session, Rusty, Seyber, and Seyber’s brother played a little trick on the kids. Seyber is retired military and his brother is in the police force, so they dressed in their uniforms and came in and told the kids that Christians could no longer meet publicly or carry Bibles openly in Ecuador. They “arrested” the speaker and Rusty went around and confiscated all the kids’ Bibles. Of course none of this was actually true, it was all pre-arranged and meant to give the kids a little taste of what it’s like to practice your faith in a country where Christians are persecuted. We have a hard time really understanding what that’s like, especially if we’ve always known religious freedom.

Camp Bellevue is a lovely place for a wedding!

We are first and foremost a camp, not an official wedding venue, and as such, we can’t offer all the fancy and elegant trappings, but if you’re looking for rustic and simple, we can do that! We’ve hosted the occasional wedding over the years, and it’s always a joy to offer this space as an affordable option to young couples just starting out. Interested in what having your wedding or anniversary celebration at Camp Bellevue would entail? Just reach out with any questions.

And a hearty congratulations to Catalina and Jhonatan who tied the knot at the camp at the end of March!

Thank you to the group of pharmacy students and their professors from William Carey University who spent their spring break in early March helping us with a medical campaign. They saw over 400 patients in 5 days at 2 different locations, and did a simple kids program in both places as well!

And also — a big thank you to our local volunteers (not pictured unfortunately), who helped us make this week possible! Doctors, translators, a naturopath, an EMT, even a couple of medical students came alongside the U.S. team to complement their efforts. You are all an essential part of our medical missions. We couldn’t do it without you!

To see more photos of this week, please check out our Instagram page (link in the comments below).

Interested in being part of our next medical mission May 31-June 4? Contact us today!

In early February, we hosted our annual Women's Spiritual Retreat with nearly 50 participants. This weekend has become one of the highlights of my year as we "serve the servants," creating a space for women in ministry to come away, be fed spiritually, and hopefully return feeling renewed and refreshed. Our theme this year was "God is our Refuge" from Psalm 62. Julie and I tag-teamed the speaking, delivering 4 lessons on communing with God through the Psalms. There were also beautiful times of worship all together, time interacting with the material in small groups, and most importantly, times of silence and solitude. God always meets with us powerfully during these weekends -- it's truly a privilege to bear witness how he is working in the lives and hearts of these women.