GIVE
"Our lives are not our own, we never know how one small contribution might change everything."
-Scholarship recipient, Anna W.
As a seventh grader, I had spent a year and a half raising my own money to come to camp for my first summer. That summer, I saw for the first time that loving Jesus was a way of life, and it could be so FUN and so joyful. I cried the last night of camp because I knew I couldn't raise that much money again before the next summer, so I likely wouldn't be coming back. One of my counselors asked me to speak at the closing ceremony about how I got there and what I learned that week. I got up on stage and shared my story. We went back to the cabin for the CQ ceremony, and I was sobbing as I started to say my goodbyes to the girls whom I'd known for a week but felt like my best friends. Then Mama D came and tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to come back next summer. "Mama D, of course, I do but I can't!" was my hysterical response. Then she proceeded to tell me, "Honey, you're coming back. An anonymous donor just paid your full tuition for next summer!" I never found out who the donor was, but I knew that God knew me and wanted me at camp. I can confidently say that I would not know Jesus the way I do now have it not been for the generosity of my scholarship donors. I would not have been a counselor at the camp for 2 summers, on the leadership team for 1 summer, and baptized in the pond we call the lake if it had not been for the bold steps of faith those donors took for the Lord and for me.
-Mikaela S.
Camp Timberline has played a pivotal role in my life in so many ways. My first year at Camp T was before my 5th-grade year. It was my first of many scholarship years as well as my first time hearing the gospel- yes, that scholarship allowed the gospel to first resonate in my heart. The following year I asked the Lord to enter my life... also at Camp. Fast forward many years, my first year of Shift, allowed me to walk out of addiction, into the light and catapult onto the path that the Lord had made for me. Fast forward a few more years and I spend the summer on leadership with the man I end up marrying- although we did not meet at Camp T, that summer was so influential to the beginning of a healthy, God-glorifying relationship and now marriage. It's hard to simply state in one sentence what those scholarships I received to go to Camp mean to me, but I can say one thing and that is this- those scholarships created a ripple effect, they didn't just affect one life, they affected many many more. They affected the campers who I eventually got the blessing to lead, the people I encouraged to work at camp, the friends I brought to camp and everyone else in between. All because one person chose to help a girl get to camp who couldn't have gone otherwise. Our lives are not our own, we never know how one small contribution might change everything.
-Anna W.
