Category: Stories
Camp Culture | Stories | Summer Staff
by Jenny Lay
At the end of each spring, as Pine Cove ramps up in preparation for another summer of Christ-centered, others-focused, seriously fun ministry, there is a special group of people who are closing out one chapter of their lives and ramping up for some of their own adventures: high school seniors. And while these seniors have […]
Inside the Cove | Spiritual | Stories
Every child should get the opportunity to go to summer camp. That was the constant refrain playing in the minds of Josh and Libby Black when they had the idea for their church, First Baptist Church of Longview, to host a week of Pine Cove City. That idea in itself is not so extraordinary; hundreds […]
Tags: church, city, counselor, gospel, ministry, pine cove city, scholarships, stories, transformed
Camp Culture | Stories | Summer Staff
How the Springs Assembled its Inaugural Summer Team You can’t open a summer camp without a few invaluable ingredients. A large enough property, for one. The buildings that will feed, house, and entertain your campers, for another. But most importantly—especially if your constant refrain is “Our Staff Is Our Program”—you need the counselors, health assistants, […]
Tags: counselor, ministry, springs, staff, stories, story, summer, summer staff, youth camp
Spiritual | Stories | Summer Staff
Kelsey was unsure of what to expect as she prepared to meet her Amplify campers in the summer of 2015. Two weeks with a cabin full of thirteen to fourteen year old girls was going to be a high-energy adventure. But she never could have anticipated the work of grace that God would do through […]
Tags: camper, counselor, life transformation, spiritual impact, story, summer staff, timbers, youth camp
“It was so clear that God was implementing every single detail and answering every little prayer,” Mallory recalls as she tells her story of seeing God’s faithfulness at camp. “And during weeks one through nine, there were times of doubt, but I was still in continual prayer without even realizing it. All throughout those nine […]
Tags: high school, life change, life transformation, Ridge, scholarships, siblings, story, summer staff, youth camp
Jack “PC Talk” Nelson accepted Christ into his life when he was six years old. Thirteen years later, he said yes to baptism. Growing up in the church, Jack had no shortage of Christian role models surrounding him—including his youth pastor, a close family friend. And in his church, baptisms were a big deal. Somehow, […]
Theirs was the only car on the highway. It was the winter of 2010, and Pine Cove President & CEO Reed “S.I.” Livesay and then Executive Director of Ministries Kevin “Opee” East were in Georgia, on the hunt for land for a new Pine Cove camp. Somehow they had missed that an ice storm was […]
Pine Cove loves seeing families come back every year and have their kids grow up at camp. But for the Lamar family, their kids’ first experience of camp was in kindergarten—and their second experience was four decades later! Charles Jr. and Mary Ellen Lamar brought their two sons, Charles III and Michael, to the Pine […]
When Christen Sharpe first arrived at Pine Cove to drop off her 12-year-old daughter, Ellis, at the Ranch in 2013, she was apprehensive and filled with anxiety for her daughter, convinced Ellis was going to be lonely. “Ellis had friends in her cabin the last two years at the Towers, Pine Cove’s elementary-age camp, but […]
Tags: community, relationships, story, summer staff
The very first instance in Scripture of a human being declaring a name over God is in Genesis 16, when Hagar calls God “El Roi,” which means “the God who sees.” It is not surprising, the significance that being seen holds in our lives now. For Hagar, being seen meant she was not alone in […]
Tags: bible, gospel, jesus, life change, Ridge, stories, story, transformation