Silver Lake News

Spring 2008

Greetings fellow alums!

Spring is just starting to open a few buds at your conference center and we are in celebration mode! We have a lot of blessings for which to be grateful these days. First and foremost, we are overjoyed to welcome our new Site Manager Dave Kobersmith. It’s wonderful to have him and his wife Kim and their two boys, Sayer and Cavan here. Dave brings a great new perspective to our sacred camp and a wealth of knowledge about outdoor ministry from his 15 years serving as site director at Birchwood Camp. We can’t wait for you all to get to know Dave and his family. They have already comfortably become part of our Silver Lake “family” after just a few weeks here!

Anne and I were also blessed with the opportunity to lead a 4-day mid-winter youth camp for the Hawaii conference on Oahu in early January. I celebrated my 50th birthday there the day the camp started and couldn’t think of a better way to launch into my next 50 years! My birthday cake read “Hawaii 5-0,” and one of the youth played the theme song to the old TV show on ukulele. What a trip! We had such a great time getting to know the wonderful and welcoming youth from the different Hawaiian Islands as they got to know each other and started to seek a vision of Youth Ministry in their state. We toured the UCC camp site, Lani Kamaha’o (very rustic, but what lush potential!), and talked about dreams of a Connecticut youth trip to Hawaii someday.

After camp was over, we got to spend some much appreciated holiday time visiting friends, seeing the sights, and snorkeling with the local creatures of the deep. We sang with the whales (underwater!), swam with fish and sea turtles, and even swam with a 35-foot whale shark (a fish, not a whale but with baleen, not teeth!). Everywhere we went, we marveled at the beauty and warmth of the people we met. Hawaii is truly a sacred paradise, and we hope to return soon for more of the sincere Aloha spirit we experienced.

Being in Hawaii prompted us to look at Silver Lake in new ways. Hawaiians face many challenges as they work to protect the pristine environment, and we realized that Silver Lake, too, is a kind of “island paradise.” Like Hawaii, this place calls each of us back again and again for that palpable experience of acceptance and grace. Our travels made us even more aware of what a fragile and unique blessing our Silver Lake “island” can be in the midst of the ocean of our high-speed, indoor, consumer-driven, throw-away world. We are called to preserve and nurture its spirit for the next 50 years and hope you will be a part of that, too. Like we did with the whales, we’ll sing some old camp songs with you when you come back!

Until next time, we remain your faithful Co-Directors
Tim and Anne Hughes

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