Picnic at Bent Tree
July 8, 2006
We decided to join the July RA/GA outing to a picnic for members of the Hispanic congregation. We took a remarkable 46 persons to Bent Tree in a seven car caravan and had a great time. This is the group picture at the spillway side of Lake Tamarack.
Zooming in a little to see the persons on the left a bit better.
The center of the group.
The right end of the group. I can't begin to name them all, but at the left is Francisco and Francisca Nava with their children Paco and Christian.
We started the morning with our RA tradition of a breakfast of pancakes and sausages.
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Johnny Huffman and Russ Danser started cooking pancakes for a crowd that we anticipated to be about 30. It kept growing until we fed 47 persons. We went through a whole box of pancake mix and part of another bag. |
We made it to Bent Tree with our eight vehicles and the ladies began preparing for a picnic lunch at the beach. |
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Groups of family and friends brought their food, and it happened that we had food from four different countries. At these two tables are people from Peru. We also had food from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico. Brenda and I got to share food from all the tables. It was delicious and very interesting. |
Russ Danser played in the lake with the children and got in some good tosses of the boys. They kept coming back to get him to do it again.
From my vantage point, it looked like this was his altitude record in the niño shotput.
One of the young Hispanic women also got into the lake with the children, and the niños were obviously delighted.
There was a lot of joy on the faces of the children as they played in the water of Tamarack Lake.
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We went around to the other side of the lake so they could spend a little time playing around the pool below the waterfall. Because of the large crowd and the winding roads, I had thought to skip our usual trip to the spillway and waterfall, but some of them had seen the pictures from previous trips so they were asking "Where is the waterfall?". I'm glad we stayed long enough to show it to them because they seemed to enjoy it very much. |
 |  Kathryn enjoyed exploring around the base of the waterfall as Abuelo Rene Vela watches carefully. |
From the top of the cliff you could see the waterfall and the deep pool below it. Rene Vela and Francisco Nava at left in this photo. |
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 |  After about 45 minutes playing around the falls we gathered the group and headed back toward Mableton. The deer at left was one of several we saw alongside the road. It had been a beautiful day and we praised the Lord for getting us all back safely. This was the largest group we have ever taken. Back at Mableton First Baptist we gathered into a circle for a prayer of thanks for the blessings of the day. |
| Children's Camp at St. George Island |
2006