Joyful Immersion

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Isaac Iverson experiences the waters of Fortune Lake for the first time.

A few summers ago, Pr. Joe Iverson watched his then one year-old son Isaac experience a lake for the first time.  Isaac crawled through the wet sand to reach the water’s edge and then relentlessly splashed and sputtered, seemingly fearless, giggling the whole while.  His family was nearby, soaking up Isaac’s pure joy.  Had they not made the commitment to set aside a week of their summer to be at camp, they would have missed this opportunity for renewal through immersion in the faith community – and the waters – of Fortune Lake.

Although Joe’s wife Brianna had attended intergenerational programs with their children for many years, this was the first time Joe was able to come along as a camper.  Like many young families, the Iversons lead a very full life.  Joe serves as a pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in Galesville, WI.  Brianna is Zion’s Youth and Family Ministry Director while also working in the synod office.  Together the two of them parent Mary, Nora, and Isaac.  Their family is very intentional about faith formation, yet like many of us, they struggle to truly be together in the day-to-day busyness of life.  Joe states, “We are with our kids, but we’re often mentally somewhere else: doing housework, or thinking about our jobs.  At camp, we were able to truly be with our kids, to watch their joy as they experienced camp in ways that we remember as being so special to us as kids.”

Joe and Brianna were shaped through camping at other Lutheran Outdoor Ministry sites, both as campers and staff members.  When Joe was assigned to the Northern Great Lakes Synod as a pastor, the growing family quickly claimed Fortune Lake as one of their camp homes.  We’re so glad they did!  Joe acknowledges that being a camp counselor is probably the best job God ever created.  For him, the next best thing is to be able to share the beauty of God’s creation and immersion in the intentional faith community of camp with his own children.  May we all find those moments of reckless abandon at the water’s edge to sustain us through the busyness of life.

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Walking Together

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Wade with a group of Rocket Campers

Because he has a twin brother, Wade Crevier has seldom been alone.  However, like many campers and staff at Fortune Lake, Wade learned what it meant to truly walk with someone else through the challenges of life through his work at camp.

When Wade and his brother Lance had just graduated from high school, Pr. David Murphy of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Peshtigo, WI encouraged them to apply for summer staff at Fortune Lake. It took them a full year to come around to the idea, eventually deciding on a whim to commit to work somewhere that they had only visited once before.  Wade recalls driving to camp that summer thinking, “Oh no. What did we do?”

But it didn’t take long for Wade to feel at home in this new place. He quickly realized that the summer was going to be a lot of fun, and that he could truly be himself at camp.  Although he didn’t yet know how, he found himself thinking that the summer was going to be a game changer.

A couple weeks later, with staff training under his belt, Wade was making his way from the duplexes to the pavilion with some Victory Campers.  The campers were tired from a busy day of activities, and one camper, Rodney, preferred to ride in a wheelchair rather than walk.  His friend was pushing him along through the rugged terrain, and Wade watched in admiration.  Suddenly, the camper pushing the wheelchair looked at Wade and said, “Do you know why I’m pushing Rodney?  Because I love him like I love Jesus.  I’m happy to be pushing him, and I’m happy to be here learning about Jesus.”

In that moment, Wade was caught off guard by the selfless love of a friend.  He felt as if he’d witnessed a glimpse of the kingdom of God in the here and now.

In the years since that impactful moment, Rodney has passed away.  When Wade recalls that trek across the field, he is hopeful that in his final hours, Rodney remembered the love of Jesus and that he had a family at Fortune Lake who loved him dearly.  

Wade leans on that moment – and others like it – as he prepares for his future as a pastor.  He is currently an M. Div. student at Wartburg Seminary.  Wade anticipates many more moments walking with people through the rugged terrain of life.  He hopes that he can walk with them exactly where they are, just as he witnessed two friends walking together across the Fortune Lake field.

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Unexpected Blessings

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Sophie enjoying the summer sun in the Fortune Lake field

For Sophie Carlson, the entire summer at camp was filled with challenges that led to unexpected blessings.  Sophie had recently graduated with her teaching degree.  She had endured the ever-changing landscape of the public schools during a pandemic while struggling to process the outcry due to racial injustice.  She needed a safe place to land, and the Holy Spirit called her back to Fortune Lake. 

Sophie was hired as the Youth Camp Coordinator, a position that involves coordinating the programming for all youth campers and dealing with the unexpected situations that arise.  “Although the leadership team had faith in me,” Sophie says,“ I was freaking out, as it was a bigger position than I had ever had.”  Midway through the summer, we learned that our international staff would not be able to arrive; Sophie was asked to step up into a second position as the Intergenerational Camp Coordinator.  Despite her apprehension, Sophie accepted with poise and grace.

Throughout the summer, Sophie witnessed campers who were grateful just to be with people again.  They were able to find a glimpse of light after a dark time, even if just for a week.  Fortune Lake was a safe space where they were fully welcomed, able to ask questions, and free to experience God’s love for them, exactly as they are.

For Sophie, the unexpected blessings have continued far beyond the summer.  She became close friends with two other staff members who are attending college in the new community where Sophie was hired as a teacher.  Those friendships have carried her through her first semester of teaching.  Her desire to be in a safe space for a season brought her back to this Place of Grace in two unexpected positions, and the blessings are still flowing.

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Trying It Out

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Nathan Bruchman (left) and a team of Summer 2021 Staff gather for a campfire

Nathan Bruchman wasn’t sure what he was going to do for the summer. All of his siblings had attended summer camp at Fortune Lake, so working at camp seemed like something to try.

Nathan described himself as pretty quiet and not very outgoing. He didn’t venture to try new things very often. However, when he arrived at camp, he found a community waiting with open arms to help him break out of his shell.  Everyone on staff was kind and supportive, and he never felt part of an “out group”.

Nearly halfway into the summer, Nathan was feeling like he didn’t really know what he was doing. His confidence needed a boost.  At an end-of-week staff meeting,  a fellow counselor  shared a story about Nathan’s campers that opened his eyes. The staffer had overheard a cabin conversation about how cool Nathan’s campers thought he was, and how impressed they were with his wheelie abilities in his wheelchair. This reminded Nathan that campers look up to staffers and may be affected by “stuff,”  even when one isn’t aware of it.

Reflecting on his summer as a FLLC counselor,  Nathan thinks the lesson that has stuck with him most is trying new things is worth the experience. Though it may not work out exactly the way you’re hoping, there is value in it nonetheless. He is grateful for both the experience of being a leader and having the opportunity to impact those who were campers.  He is thankful for all of the new friendships and connections he established while at camp.

Fortune Lake provides a space where the Holy Spirit can act through community. People are encouraged to get out of their comfort zones, create new relationships, and be appreciated for who they are.   We meet God in a multitude of ways through this ministry, where we all get to try something new. Thinking about trying a summer on Fortune Lake’s Staff like Nathan did? Email campdirector@fortunelake.org to inquire, or visit the Employment section of our webpage for more information.

 

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Making Space for Gratitude

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Liz Grenke-Leach in one of her favorite outdoor settings

Liz Grenke-Leach breathes gratitude and shares it freely. But in her role as a public middle school teacher, she was tired. Recently she had the unique opportunity to share Fortune Lake–this place she has long loved–with the students she serves, and it proved to be exactly what she–and they–needed. 

7th grade is a tumultuous time. There is a lot of developmental change that is hard to understand, and young people and their peers can be hard on themselves and one another. Couple all that with a pandemic, the question of what “normal” school even looks like anymore, and it’s a real challenge. The recent commitment of Liz’s teaching team at Calumet’s Washington Middle School to prioritize school camp helped a group of 7th grade students to get out from the school walls and find their gratitude again.

On the first evening at Fortune Lake, one student was anxious about being away from home. She reached out to Liz,, and Liz invited her to go on a walk through the grounds. Daylight was waning, and they didn’t have a flashlight. Liz reassured her by saying, “Are you okay? I know every foot of these grounds.” The student replied, “I can tell you do.” Together they walked through the dark, together they breathed deeply, together they found calm. Eventually, the student was ready to re-enter the group. Although she and Liz had developed a bedtime plan, she didn’t end up needing it. At the end of the third day, she was so proud to have made it!

The pandemic has shown us that we all sometimes need an opportunity to re-center before we can sincerely re-enter the spaces to which we’ve been called. We all need someone to walk with us, someone who has tread this path before, to tell us it’s going to be okay. Through her experience at camp, Liz was reminded that we need to build time and space for gratitude, for ourselves and for our young people. Fortune Lake provided that opportunity, both for her and for the students she accompanied. Their teachers and our Fortune Lake staff could sense the students’ gratitude as they played field games, cleaned up after meals in the dining hall, learned how to jump off the dock for the first time (yes, even in October!), or learned three-part harmonies around the campfire. Their smiles–and Liz’s–said it all.

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Generations of Grace

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Melissa and her daughter Caroline in front of Emanuel Lodge with the tree they planted in Vicki’s memory.

Melissa Salminen has experienced Fortune Lake as a place of grace, meeting her spirit needs, across the span of her entire life. A former camper, camp counselor, teacher, and now seminary student and mom,  she reflects on her relationship with Fortune Lake with gratitude.                

Melissa remembers, “ I always seemed to get injured in some way during my camp week!”   Attending camp every year since third grade, she thinks these little injuries may have enabled her to take risks she had not been brave enough to take before.   She is grateful for that.

It was her mother, Vicki Baldini, who encouraged Melissa and her brother to attend camp as kids, as Vicki was a camper herself back in the 60s. When Melissa became a counselor during college, her parents began to support the camp even more fervently– her dad helping with upgrades on facilities and her mom quilting with Sisters of the Cloth.   After being away from camp for nearly a decade, Melissa became involved again through that unique community of women who support FLLC by making quilts for the annual quilt auction.

When Vicki passed away, Melissa continued to help with the quilt auction for one more year, wanting to make sure that the tradition of support continued. She had brought her own daughter, Caroline, to Women and Kids week in 2019 and the two were heartbroken in 2020 when camp was shut down. In 2021, Melissa and Caroline returned for an Intergenerational week, and Melissa found what she had always experienced — grace, made especially meaningful in her mom’s absence, to be able to continue this tradition of camp and faith with her own daughter.

Melissa has experienced God’s presence again and again at Fortune Lake, as the Spirit met her where she was:  a curious and exploring camper, a staff person sharing a summer of work, a daughter in grief, or a mother passing on faith.

Just as no one hears a single sermon the same way, no two people experience camp the same way. “And yet, God is there,” Melissa reflects. Melissa is proud that her mom was one of the first Tenacious 200 givers to this ministry, a tradition she and her husband carry on today.                      

“When life gets uncertain and seems to swirl around,”  she says, “there is camp. A community of peace, of grace, a place to just be–a glimpse of the Kingdom to come, here on earth.”

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God’s Faithfulness to All Generations

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Arlo, Christina, and Violet Maki at Intergenerational Camp, Summer 2021

Fortune Lake is a Place of Grace where God’s goodness and faithfulness are felt and passed from generation to generation. Christina (Kenney) Maki has recently returned to have this truth affirmed for her and her family.

Christina first experienced Fortune Lake as a young camper and then went on to work on the summer staff as a high school student. Like many young adults, Christina then drifted away from church and camp. As a mother of young children, she found herself longing for something that was missing, so she started worshiping at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Iron Mountain, MI where her children attended preschool. Later she began working in their church office. As the administrator, she often saw the Fortune Lake flyers and brochures come across her desk. She remembered “the connection that you never lose” to the people at Fortune Lake, and she longed for that experience again, both for herself and her growing children. She wondered if an intergenerational camp might be perfect for them; Arlo was too young to attend on his own, and Violet was nervous about coming to camp for the first time.

For Christina, her family’s time at Fortune Lake turned out to be “the one true vacation I get as a mom.” She is grateful that she doesn’t have to prep or clean up from meals, prepare a packing list (it’s provided!), or think of structured activities for her family to do. She especially appreciates the adult Bible study time, as she finds the material to be accessible, regardless of a person’s experience, and it fills a deeply felt need in her life. Her children love the time they get to spend with the camp staff, playing games, being silly, and experiencing God’s word at their own levels.

Christina knows that the time her family spends with the staff is more than just fun and games. She remembers how much she looked up to the staff when she was a child–people like Ruth Almen, the Rundman family, and Ruth Warmanen–and how their examples guided her own decision making later in life. She trusts that the staff her children are meeting now will continue to be their Christian role models into the future. She especially values the passing on of the teachings of Jesus and the inclusivity of all God’s people, which are manifest daily at Fortune Lake. Christina hopes that one day her children’s aspirations of working at camp will be realized so they might perpetuate the cycle of passing on faith through trusted relationships.

As the Maki family joined their voices in chanting our summer theme verse–“Spell it out loud: L-O-R-D! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 100, verse 5!”– it was glorious to see the truth of these words reflected on their sun-kissed, happy faces.

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A Place of Grace… and so Much More

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Pr. Ron during his Supported Rental, Summer 2021

Written by Pr. Ron McCallum

They call it a place of grace, this camp on the shores of Fortune Lake near Crystal Falls, Michigan. It is that, for sure: a place where everyone is welcome, a place where everyone can be themselves, a place where the Word is spoken in the actions of staff, in the songs that are sung, and in the things that kids and adults learn here. 

The first thing I noticed when I arrived here was the pristine beauty of this place. The lake is as clear as ice used for sculpture. The grass is beautiful and if you are here on a day when they mow, the smell reminds one of days gone by when people in the neighborhood all mowed at the same time. The surrounding forests are amazing and in them, on one of many trails, I saw deer, a small snake, chipmunks, many butterflies, and trees of many species. Just the pine smell alone as I walked was intoxicating.

I came to Fortune Lake telling people I wanted the time to write some things I had been planning to write. But, as I moved from day to day, something else happened. Call it renewal or rejuvenation or cleansing or catharsis or whatever. Those descriptions just don’t seem to be complete enough, strong enough, just right. What I felt was spiritual in the best sense of that word. It was a reconnection with self, a reclamation of my own waning faith, a new direction with God, and a personal calm that I have not felt in a long time.

2020 was a difficult year for me. At times I felt lost and alone. Other times I was beat down and felt great grief and loss. Where was God leading me? Was God leading me? Where was God’s sustaining love? Why didn’t I feel it?

At this place of grace, I discovered that what I was missing, what I was lacking in 2020 was the cleansing breath of the Spirit as only God can give. It was here waiting for me all along. From the cool morning breezes to the bright red sunsets, from the deer jumping out on the trail to the beautiful monarch butterflies flying almost everywhere at the camp, from the friendly waves of staff and visitors to the deeper conversations, God’s spirit reached in and lifted my spirit.

I thank this place of grace for working its magic. I will return and will continue to tell others that there is indeed grace here and so much more.

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One Connection at a Time

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Fortune Lake provides opportunities for God to make an impact through others. One camper, Paavo Rundman, saw that first hand during his time at camp this summer. Coming out of a year of lockdowns and restrictions, Paavo missed both the physical space at Fortune Lake as well as being a part of the community. With that in mind, he decided to take the leap and become a Leader in Training, or an LIT. The LIT Program combines the traditional youth camp experience with both ministry education and leadership training and is open to youth who have completed grades 10-12.

During the first week of youth camp, Paavo had been placed in a Villager cabin, home to 3rd and 4th grade boys. The week was filled with games, waterfront time, arts and crafts, and learning about the Word of God. On Friday, the last day of the week, Paavo had just finished up his Bible Study with his campers when one came forward with a special request. The camper was fascinated by the stories that the group had studied throughout the week and wanted to learn more about God, but he didn’t have a Bible. Paavo knew that there would be a Bible somewhere that he could give to the camper, and so he found him one. Once the Bible was in the child’s hands, he asked what parts he could read. The child determined that he would begin with Genesis, the home of many of our lessons from this summer and to plenty more fantastic stories of God at work in the world. The excitement spread, and Paavo ended up procuring a Bible for another camper in his cabin.

Paavo knew that this exchange was God working through him. It became evident to him as time passed that it was important that he not only make connections with his campers, but that he did the best he could to love every person that came to camp. Through his time at Fortune Lake this summer, he grew in the knowledge that he was playing a pivotal role in the lives of the campers he interacted with, no matter how brief their time together. This growth brought up two truths for Paavo: (1) you are always impacting others, whether you realize it or not, and (2) you will not always have the opportunity to see the effects of your impacts, you can only hope that they pay it forward one connection at a time.

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An Invitation to Community

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Josh (far right) with a group of campers in 2019

Fortune Lake changes the lives of people like Josh Stachnik.  When Josh first came to camp it was High School Week 2015, and he did not want to be here.  His pastor had arranged for him to come, but Josh had his heart set on attending a different camp.  Camp was overflowing with young people who all seemed to be having fun, but Josh wasn’t convinced.

It was Wednesday, midway through the week.  The high schoolers were participating in an all-camp activity. As was the pattern, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves; everyone except Josh, who was letting his personal issues get him down.  Two campers, Charlotte and Lillian, approached Josh and invited him to join in with the group.  Josh recalls thinking, “Well, I might as well try to have at least one good memory from camp,” so he began to let his guard down.  In that moment, things shifted for Josh.  He saw how openly the Fortune Lake community embraced him exactly as he was, personal issues and all.  He felt loved and accepted and was able to experience the true joy that he had witnessed in the other campers.

Today, Josh acknowledges that the invitation from his fellow high school campers changed his life.  God worked through that moment to allow him to begin to let his walls down.  Thanks to that interaction and many that followed, Josh is striving to mature into the person God wants him to be.  This summer, Josh will be serving on our staff for the second time as a Cabin Leader.  He is committed to inviting all of his campers to be open to the experiences of Fortune Lake so that they too may grow in faith.

Support from generous donors allows us to invite people to experience true joy in this place of grace.  This summer, due to Covid mitigation efforts and half-capacity lodging, it is more costly to run camp than it has ever been.  However, we know that we all need camp more than ever before.  We need to be together.  We need to be affirmed in who we are as children of God.  We need to experience the authentic Christian community.

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