Greetings from Batesville-Leesville, South Carolina!

We have 51 campers and 58 staff members participating in this year’s “Mapping Your Future.”

Camp Agape-Preteen started out with a few challenges. For one, we had a strong smell of smoke in the walk-in cooler in the kitchen. We could not figure out where the smoke was coming from, but the compressor fans were blowing to the point that you couldn’t stay in the cooler very long. A local fireman came to check it out (unbeknownst to most), but could find nothing!

That night, one of our kitchen staff pulled out a large box of eggs to get ready for the opening day of camp and saw that one of the egg cartons had combusted. The smoldering egg cartons were the reason for the smoke and the smell. What a relief it wasn’t anything else! At first, we thought it was “fowl play,” but we did some research on the Internet and found that there have been cases of this happening. We had received these eggs for free since they had double yolks. Needless to say, we’re enjoying a lot of smoked food!

We’ve also had some other challenges—we had lights go out in the gym and an empty propane tank, for instance. But we overcame the hurdles, and the first day of camp was a beautiful, sunny but cool day. It became warmer as the hours went by and got up to 91, but thankfully, we do have air-conditioned buildings.

We have some new staff and some new campers this year, which is always exciting! Jeannie and I also have a lot more help than last year, with the addition of a program director and an administrative assistant. So things started off nice (especially with biscuits and gravy for breakfast), and we look forward to a great camp!

We always appreciate everyone’s prayers for a safe and successful camp!

Eric and Jeannie Evans