Trinity Camp was located on one of the many hills in Pine Mountain, Georgia. With eight owned acres of land, the camp was pretty big and impressive. A huge, flat lake banked itself against the camp, so a dock had been built and we named the water Lake AnnaRose, after Jeff's then-two-year-old daughter. A fitting name, seeing how it was typically gentle and happy, but had its wild and stormy days, just like AnnaRose.
Jeff Hudson bought the land back in 1997, and immediately decided that he wanted to turn it into a camp. It took years to arrange and build, but Jeff stayed true to his dream, his wife Angie fully behind him. He claimed that God spoke to him one day in church, telling him to create a camp that teaches kids about Him. So that's just what he did. The construction was finally completed, and Trinity Camp opened to the public in the summer of 2000.
Jeff was the youth group leader at my family's church, so I'd known him all my life. Our families were pretty close, and I always respected him as a child, and even now at eighteen. My mother volunteered at the camp the first year it opened, taking me with her as I was not yet two. So you could say I'd been going all my life. Eventually, I reached the age where I could actually attend camp, and I was so excited. The summer I completed eighth grade, I was allowed to not just attend, but I became a camp counselor, specifically for the Romans Cabin.
To get to the camp, you had to ride the highway towards Callaway Gardens until you saw a dirt road on your right. Turn down it, then you'd be following it further into the woods for a few miles, eventually coming into a clearing where immediately there'd be a dirt patch to the side for parking. Get out, and near you would be a large, wooden one-story building which was the registration center (or as we call it, The Goodbye Center of Sadness). That is where people sign in and drop off their kids for the summer, and also where they went to pick them up.
A few hundred yards behind the registration center was the row of wooden cabins. There were ten, but in a recent renovation, we added three more. Each cabin was named after a book in the New Testament, and all in order. The first was the Matthew cabin, then going down the line in order till you reached the last one - Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First Thessalonians. And each cabin had a motto based on a Bible verse, like John's was "For God So Loved Us!" Or (for Philippians) "We Can Do All Things Through Christ!"
Behind the cabins another few hundred to a thousand feet was the bath house. In that was the showers and boys and girls restrooms, and a separate room that held two washers and two dryers. Once a week, we collected laundry from all the kids, and Angie, Jeff's wife, washed all of it. She said she liked to do it, which none of us got, but we weren't going to argue.
Up the hill sat the chapel, the dining pavilion (or as the kids say, the mess hall), and the Hudsons' house. Every evening, kids and counselors from every cabin headed down there for a quick few minutes of songs, a fun activity going with a short lesson, and cabin bonding time. Meals were at the mess hall for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Kids were allowed to sit with members of other cabins, but we always made sure that they spent time with their cabin mates later so that no one felt left out.
To the right of the mess hall was the Hudsons' house. That was where Angie and Jeff stayed all summer. It looked just like every other cabin, except for the American flag jutting out from a pole by the door, and the Adirondack chairs on the front porch. Plus the sign Angie painted and hung above the door that read "I <3 Jesus!!"
The rest of the eight acres was woods. We made several trails, and used them to take our cabins on nature hikes, picking flowers for special occasions (or for fun), and other stuff. And of course there was the lake, which was calm and serene. I felt like it was the one thing that never changed each year. It remained the same, a forever friend that welcomed everyone the first day back at camp.
