eCommuniquÃ© Lite - December 8, 2017

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Liesl Schnibbe Accepts Role as
Big Lake Youth Camp Associate Director

Liesl Schnibbe will join the Big Lake Youth Camp team as the new associate director. Liesl brings a wealth of camp experience to her position having served as horsemanship director, lifeguard, challenge course facilitator, and counselor at Camp MiVoden. She also spent a year as a task force assistant youth director in the Upper Columbia Conference. Her primary responsibilities will be to coordinate outdoor school programs, recruiting and developing staff, and serve as a project manager for the ambitious fundraising and building projects of Big Lake. She will manage the office, RAD camps, and villages at Big Lake during the summer. Prior to this appointment, Liesl, served in the Oregon Conference in the legal/trust department as an assistant and before that in the human resources department. She replaces Arthur Ordelheide who left in September 2017. She was approved by the executive committee on December 7, 2017 will begin full time January 1, 2018.

The Well By Dick Duerksen

Today was not special. The sun came up orange and smoky just like every other day. The air was brittle, as always. And the wind’s gift of yellow desert dust was slipping through every possible opening to fill the hut I call home, just like every other day.

I began the chores without thinking - sweeping the dirt into piles, joining the piles, and then sending it all back to the wind that had brought it. Re-arranging the sleeping mat and stirring the smoldering fire to life once more. No need for thought. Every movement was a habit, arms and legs moving to a tune composed through years of caring for myself, and the drunken men who slept here.

Hard to believe I had allowed five of them to marry me. I must have been drunk too.

Now I was almost alone, except for the black goat who demands little and still gives me a day’s ration of warm milk.

I wish the well were not so far away, and sorry that the path runs through a corner of the village, but the cracked water jar is almost empty again. The man drinks too much in the mornings.

No. Today was not special. Just the day after yesterday and the hours I must live before tonight would finally arrive.

I must go for water. But, not now. The village women would still be there, chirping about nothing as if it were all important, and laughing, making me their joke. Read on...

Find many more announcements and events on the Oregon Conference website at www.OregonConference.org/announcements!