A Letter from the First Summer at Pine Lake Fellowship Camp
By Matt Graybill
Every day, I do the same thing on the drive into camp. I pull up to the mailbox, grab the stack of letters and the occasional Amazon package, and sort it on the passenger seat before I reach the office. Bills. Catalogs. A donation envelope or two always make it a good start to the day. And every spring, like clockwork, registration forms arrive from Larry Miller, one of hundreds he’s mailed to Pine Lake over the years. So, about ten years go, when I saw Larry’s handwriting on an envelope, I expected to open it and find a few camper registrations. Instead, I found photocopied pages of a handwritten letter & envelope he’d mailed to his then-fiancée (later wife), Maxine, postmarked July 2, 1967. The letter, written in cursive, described his week as a counselor at Pine Lake Fellowship Camp: a glimpse into the very first summer at Pine Lake!
Kids this age can be tremendous
Larry’s letter – Page #1“Oh Maxine, Camp was really great!” Larry wrote as he shared about the week’s events that included a Nature Olympic Contest, with magnolia-leaf discus throws and pinecone shot puts. Lithuania took first place, with the U.S., China, Russia, and Greece trailing behind. There were plenty of softball games, chigger bites, and more. He summed up the week with a declaration: “Kids this age can be tremendous if given a chance.”
Camp is a setting where kids are given that chance. It’s a chance for kids to get outside and belong to a community of cabinmates and role models. It’s a chance to try new things, push themselves, and achieve new heights. They learn it’s okay to mess up, they grow in confidence, they get to be silly and wear ridiculous outfits at crazy supper, and they don’t have to take tests or have every detail of their lives measured by parents, teachers, and social media. It’s where kids can be kids!
Larry saw that camp reaches beyond the fun, games, and activities. The relationships and community found at camp lay a foundation of trust where God can work in each of our lives. On the last evening of camp that summer, Larry witnessed “about a dozen campers find the Lord as their Savior. In the flickering campfire…they came to kneel at a wooden branch cross…Oh what a joy this was. It overshadowed any small insistence of lesser things.”
Larry’s Letter – Page #2
One week turned into sixty years
Maxine Miller and her daughter, Judy Clay, serve in the summer camp kitchen!
It took only one week for Larry to sense the momentum of God’s Spirit at work here, and it moved Larry & Maxine to support Pine Lake for the next six decades. Together, Larry and Maxine spearheaded efforts to sponsor hundreds of summer campers. They worked tirelessly to recruit campers, raise funds through community fish fries, and transport those campers to camp on the 120-plus mile round trip from Mashulaville, MS, multiple times a summer.
I’m grateful for a simple letter Larry wrote to the love of his life on a hot Mississippi day in July 1967. Reading the letter feels like he couldn’t tell her about his week fast enough. It shows a heart for serving others, something Larry and Maxine lived out together for decades, and something Larry still carries on today at 80 years old. And it captures what Pine Lake has been about for sixty years. Camp is a place where an untold number of kids from different backgrounds and settings meet Christ and are transformed. All because a vision was sparked and a growing group of people like Larry and Maxine believed that, given the chance, kids can be tremendous. To this day, as we gather around the campfire each summer evening, I see what Larry saw: kids of the same age being given that same chance.
For hundreds of campers, the answer to “Who brought you to the fire?” is Larry and Maxine Miller. For others, it was a youth pastor, a grandparent, a Sunday school teacher, or a friend who said, “You should come with me.”
And I still check the mail every morning. Now, when I see Larry’s handwriting in the stack, I open it first.
Tell Us:
Who brought you to the fire? Share a name, a photo, or a memory, and we may feature your story this year.
Be the one who brings the next camper.