The Outdoor Education staff has arrived! This is a sure sign of spring. For 5 weeks in the spring, and 5 weeks in the fall we run science camps (environmental education) for Christian schools throughout California. It is one of my favorite programs because it takes young kids from urban and suburban lifestyles and gets them out into creation, where, with the help of the staff, they are exposed to some of the mysteries, wonders, and truth that God has hidden in the forest.

Just outside my office window is a small creek. It is quiet right now, but once Outdoor Education begins this creek will be swarming with kids throwing rocks, building dams, digging in the mud, and flipping over "stuff." It reminds me of the quote by Richard Louv, "Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in the creek, turn it over to see what lives on the unseen side of that confusion."

The Outdoor Education program helps students and adults alike make sense of that confusion, pointing to the order and detail of a God who does incredible work, even on the strange creatures under a rock. That same God has a greater desire to do an incredible work on the even stranger creature flipping over the rock!

Kept,

Jeff Lilley
Executive Director
Hume Lake Christian Camps
jlilley@humelake.org

P.S. That little bird in the cup (a baby American Coot) really is that color. We did NOT spray paint it. It is an American Coot chick.