Some lessons in God's Sovereignty at ANBC

It can be easy to slip into the mindset that we are in charge of our ministries — to forget that, in fact, God has everything well in hand and most certainly under control.

This past week was a challenging one for us here at Arrowhead, and it served to be a stark reminder that, in fact, no matter how much we may strive to be fully prepared and equipped for our summer camps; God can, and does, have farther reaching plans. So, with this reminder we are encouraged.

We would ask you to join with us in prayer for a number of issues that have arisen with respect to our summer camp ministries.

• We are still awaiting permission and a venue to host a day camp in one community. We ministered there last summer, and were well received - we are still waiting for social services to confirm our attendance there.

• We were informed this week, that a community that we normally have a large number of campers from has made the decision to not fund any summer camping activities for the youth excepting that which originates from their own recreation dept.; this has the potential to have a dramatic impact on the ability of campers to come from that community to summer camp. We have received some sponsorship funds, this may help to some degree.

• We found it necessary to cancel the second of our junior camps (July 28 - August 1) due to an almost complete absence of volunteer staff. We are making arrangements with communities that had been scheduled to come that week to come on the other weeks.

• We had to cancel our 3rd annual Charity Golf Classic that was scheduled for yesterday - due to low attendance. This has generated several thousand dollars of income for ANBC in years past, which has been very helpful to our summer programs. Although this was initially discouraging, we have seen the Lord providing in amazing ways this summer that far outweighs what we may have lost to the tournament.

• We found out this week that the lifeguard that we had lined up was unable to re-certify for her waterfront lifeguarding qualifications. She will, thankfully, still be able to join us for our summer camps, but not in the role of lifeguard. We have made some new inquiries about finding lifeguards for even just one day for each week of camp. New Brunswick has a dramatic shortage of lifeguards, so this is also a prayer request.

• As we enter our last week prior to the camps, there is a great deal of work to be done here at the Center. Please pray for energy and wisdom as camp hurtles toward us.