Generations of Grace
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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