Dan's first day of work

I finally started work today at Camp Columba. I started the day with an impromptu meeting with the grounds keeper. He's a really decent fellow who spends two days a week working on the lawns, forests and trails at camp. He has been here for 4 years and understands what the mission of the place is. He was also really handy helping Samantha understand the sprinkler system that is in our gardens. It is really rather neat.

I spent most of the rest of my day being introduced to the systems in place to deal with bookings and camper registration. The last of our summer holiday camps, Pampering Princesses started today. The current office administrator is a wonderful lady who spent the better part of her day introducing me to how things work at camp. I refer to her as the current office administrator because she recently gave notice to the Board of Directors. Her last day will be February 29th. I have a lot to learn from her in the next 5 weeks.

The most interesting thing that I took away from today was that many of the issues that Camp Columba faces here are the same issues that church camps in Ontario are facing. Declining church numbers, fewer children in the church, harder time getting volunteers, balancing the price of camps against the economic climate of the area, finding the dollars to put towards capital maintenance and improvements, trying to pay camp leaders enough so that they can justify working at camp to their parents - just to name a few. I would have liked to discover that these challenges were not present in New Zealand but there is something comforting in finding out that it is not so different down here.