I Give Up

It’s one of my favorite things about summers at Tejas.

Once each week all of the girls gather in a conference room for Girls Discipleship. The teaching time usually begins about 15 minutes late because of all the chatter that fills the room. Most of the time there’s food, usually some form of chocolate; and the health conscious of the group snack on fruit. The opening prayer is sometimes started over the last few words of conversation as a tired staff unwinds from a long day and settles in for some time in the Word. We end the night in smaller groups, hearing the testimony of and praying over each person. With no ill-will toward the male of the species, it is the place where relationships are formed, real fellowship is enjoyed, and God’s Word is applied to all of our lives.

This year we have studied the surrendered life: embracing the concept that real strength comes in giving control to Another. We’ve covered topics like giving up our personal rights, letting God manage our time, surrendering our emotions, and in talking about our finances really addressed greed and selfishness.

I usually really like getting to teach the group of girls. I find that the process of preparing and teaching is a fulfilling one for me. But this topic has been different. To say that I have been challenged personally is a bit of an understatement. Jennifer Jones (who picked the topic and who assigned me to teach specific weeks of the study) says that it was the Holy Spirit that put it all together, but it’s been kinda fun to blame it on her. Thanks be to God, but I was convicted at every turn. Some weeks of preparation were rough. I found myself sitting down to prepare to teach, expecting to have a nice, neat outline ready in an hour or so, and found that the Lord was more interested in making me look more like Jesus than in me having an outline put together. More than once I would have an outline written, only to change it the morning of the meeting as I sat on my couch spending personal time in the Word.

While being refined is certainly not always fun, what an incredible Savior we have who refuses to leave us where we are. Even when we are in vocational ministry, He is not interested in where we have been with Him before, how we have seen Him move in the lives of others, or where we think we ought to be headed. In being obedient to be transparent in front of our SMT girls, I have found the blessing of a more intimate relationship with God. What a job! I can’t believe I get paid for this. And Lord, it’s Yours!

Natalie West
Summer Camp Director

Dooploma

With the swift approach of the new wastewater plant comes the need for an on-site, state licensed plant operator. Upon our arrival at the camp, one of my first assignments as the new Facilities Director was to complete a correspondence course and take a state exam to receive a class-D wastewater operations license. Well, I am happy to be reporting back that the "paper work" is done and as soon as the plant construction is complete we can all safely flush, knowing that what we send downhill will soon be processed into clean (non-potable) water to hydrate those meadows fields.
Matt Wall, our Project Manager, will begin studying for his class-D license in the very near future.

Mike Newton
Facilities Director

Swimming Under the Late Night Moon

One of my favorite activities during the summer months is a pool party. Many groups enjoy coming down to the pool during the evening to splash under the moon. As the first summer hosting two groups at once, I was questioning whether or not the pool was going to be able to stay as sparkling clean as it has in the past. Luckily with the great cleaning work of our supervisors, the pool has remained as clear as ever before and remains one of the most popular recreation areas of the summer.

Seth Gordon
Recreation Director

Rec in the Meadows

The last time I posted (some time back in may) I wrote about the creation of the new Rec fields - so far they have been working great. During one of my favorite weeks of the summer I took the this picture down in the meadows and it really made me realize how neat it is to have a Rec field literally in the middle of the meadows - we even have a windmill next to it. Hopefully it has provided as much fun as I have enjoyed on it. Although the fields are not up to professional sports team standards, they are far better than the areas we have used in the past.


Seth Gordon
Recreation Director

May the Geeks Unite!

Ok... Ok... you thought this would be posting about retreat items and summer camp, but you are trumped on this one. The IT guy of Camp Tejas is coming out and taking over. The last post was about controlling Lights and A/C units from computers (which is really cool). This post is about the use of DD-WRT, updating our wired network infrastructure and installing an internet filter.

First off, DD-WRT is a way to have more control over our wireless access points around the camp. I have been playing with a couple of test routers over the last year, and now I am starting to "revamp" our wireless boxes around the camp. Since we have been adding wireless access points over the last several years, each box has its own settings and web pages. With DD-WRT I am able to have a common interface for all (or at least most) of our wireless access points. Today I finished revamping our Dining Hall and Tejas Home boxes, I also got ready to install one for the Office, Tejas Inn and SMT Office. Hopefully with this open source product, administration of our wireless network will be a little easier.

Second, I have been playing around in attics this week. Since getting here, I have been using non-kosher methods of getting network access faster between buildings at the camp. In the early 2000's we used wireless bridges between our main buildings. This helped a whole lot, but with the advance of technology, our solution was not keeping up. Applications, shared files, Internet, VOIP phones and printers needed more bandwidth. My "cheap" solution was to start using old 4 pair phone lines that were run back before I was born (not really, but a while ago) as network cable. Today's standard speed is 100 megabits, but on some connections I am lucky to have 10 megabits. With all that said, I have started to replace old lines with new ones and have installed 1000 megabits switches to help speed up our network. In the near future I plan on replacing the lines between buildings with Fiber Optic cables. This should really speed things up and hopefully be a versatile solution for the future of technology at the camp.

Lastly, the newest addition to our family of network products is an Internet filter. This solution by Intgerity Online will help safeguard our staff and guests with the waywardness of the internet. It helps to filter internet content and blocks bandwidth consuming games and applications. In the future we plan to add an email component to this solution to help with spam.

These are the happenings of the IT guy.

Paul Biles
Retreat Director

Control that A/C

As summer gets hotter, the A/C works longer. One of the new improvements at Camp Tejas is the addition of a product from XCI Corp, the network thermostat and light controller. With these products we are able to control and monitor the air conditioning in all the new rooms at the Four Seasons and control the outside lights. Right now we are able to check on and make temperature changes to all 12 private rooms. We have the equipment and are in the process of adding control to the large conference room and the outside lights.

With this system, we will also be able to control and make custom timers for all the outside lights around the building. This helps us both in energy savings and also man power. Before we had to send someone around to turn outside lights on whenever guests are here, now we will be able to do it from our computers and save a lot of time.

By controlling the A/C, we are able to make sure rooms are not turned all the way down to 60 degrees and left that way, or in the winter up to 90! The thermostats will limit the range and also automatically cut it off when the group leaves. This should decrease our energy costs by being proactive in our efforts to control that A/C.

Paul Biles
Resident IT Manager

Still awaiting the big storm

Last summer it was too much rain. This summer - no rain. Actually, we have not had enough rain here at the camp to create runoff since early April. Our entire area is in a drought, but it must be the worst immediately around us.

I've included a little weather map to illustrate a very common theme for the last three months. The rain heads our direction, it parts, moves around us, then merges back together on the other side. This weather map is from the storm that blew through last night. This image was captured about 30 minutes after is blew by us. No rain here. I don't know how, but no rain. Looking at this map, you would think we got some good rain. For some reason, it's just not in the Lord's time - yet.

Nonetheless, when it comes to summer camp, the kids have a lot more fun in the sun than in the rain. It's a little hotter than normal, but all the activities are open - with the exception of the entire new lake. Some of the new lake is now open, which includes the slide, rope swing, and swimming area, but about 2/3 of it is still awaiting the big storm.

David Jones, CEO

Anybody out there?

Well it has been a while since any of us have posted to this site. I think that it is very much a representation of how busy the last couple of weeks have been. Summer staff arrived and have been training for the last two weeks. This weekend they are all on mission trips to the Houston and Waco areas. I am sure Natalie, Seth, David or Mike will post on that later.

This weekend we have the pleasure of hosting our last two retreat groups of the Spring season. There is a family group from Houston staying until Sunday afternoon and a children's group from Austin that will be heading out later this evening after supper. I am very greatful for the youth from Giddings who are helping out this weekend and for Arthur, one of our past summer staff and intern.

Alfredo, and his boys Freddie, Ceasar and Louis are still here and working on our lakes. Yesterday they started a siphon from the small lake by Billy's house to the new lake in the meadows. We were able to drain about a foot off that lake and today they will be moving that siphon over to our main swim lake by Marmax. The last couple of weeks we have been building up the lake level to store up all the water we can. Now is the time to start transfering that water down to the meadows.

Prayer Requests:
1. Several staff on the mission trips caught some sort of bug and haven't been feeling well. Please pray that they will not be discouraged.
2. That God will provide the water needed to fill the new meadows lake.
3. Our maintenace crews, they are working non-stop to get last minute projects done for the summer camps.

Paul Biles - Retreat Director

Behind the Scenes: God's Beauty

One of the tasks we do while guests are here is to check the conference rooms in the morning. We refill water dispensers, clean up messes and take out the trash. While taking the trash to the dumpster, which would normally be one of those errands I like to do quickly, I had to pause and look at God's creation. The sunrise that morning was amazing! I only had my phone camera with me and it didn't catch the full magnitude of God's beauty. The sun was coming over the horizon and in the far field I could see 20 or so cows grazing and then in the field closer to me were 10 deer grazing as well. It is times like this that I would love to express the importance and need to get away from everyday life. Even though I live out in the country and work at a retreat, I too need to make sure to get away from hectic schedules and relax with God. Whether it be here at Camp Tejas, at your local park, your back yard or your kitchen table, I encourage you to take time to enjoy God's beauty and relax in it.

Paul Biles - Retreat Director

A New Sitting Place

We are working on new places around the camp to sit, pray, and listen. There are LOTS of great places - just not enough benches. Thanks to a wonderful donor, our little fishing dock is now larger and it includes what we believe will be one the favorite spots to meet with the Lord. The dock was completed yesterday afternoon and at 6:50 this morning, a guest was there enjoying the peace and waiting for the sun to rise from behind the clouds. This bench will be used by thousands for many years to come.

Let us know if you too would like to provide the resources necessary to build a bench (or even a dock) that would provide a place such as this one. The name of the location will be your choice.

David Jones, CEO

david@camptejas.org