Tennessee Trek
What is trek?
- Opportunity for our youth to experience a week of living in a Christian community.
- Spend a week camping on a primitive island at Dale Hollow Lake
- Through bible study learn more about God and our relationship with him.
- Develop friendships as you work together with others in your small group.
- Enjoy lots of water fun - boating, skiing, tubing, sailing, swimming, and more.
- You don't ski? Learn from professional ski instructors.
- Eat, eat, and eat some more.
- Worship our wondrous Lord in rousing and inspirational nightly campfire
- Slink through the woods with your team mates trying to avoid the other teams, contact the clue-givers, and safely return to the beach
The main purpose of TREK is to deepen the youths relationship with Christ so that they are better equipped to share their faith with their peers.
A typical day at TREK
Each youth is grouped into a small group. Then several of these groups form to create a servant team. There are roughly 6 servant teams and each take different duties each day. Servant teams help cook breakfast/lunch, dinner, sanitation, fire duty, and other similar duties. This service in teams helps not only get the work done but reinforce the spiritual idea of service to the Lord.
- 8ish - awake
- Breakfast
- Servant Team Duties
- Bible Study - in their small groups
- Lunch
- Water front opens and water activities begin - these activities last all afternoon until dinner.
- 4ish the dinner Servant teams report
- 5-6 - Dinner - The food at Trek is very good. Consider that the island has no electricity, no running water, we bring in everything. Meals like taco's, baked chicken, and the like are nutritious, tasty and very much appreciated after a busy day's activities.
- After dinner the cleanup servant team cleans. Others have time to themselves.
- Campfire - around dark - 8:30-9 -people begin gathering for the campfire. The campfire is wondrous time to sing our praises to the Lord and Jesus our Christ. Every nite we recap highlites of the day. Spectacular tubing spills, great first skiing experiences and the like are shared. Then we enjoy a brief message pertaining to the day's bible study topic is given. The campfire is a combination of fun, meaningful information, and a time to worship and thank God for all we have.
- Finally it is time to retire to the luxiourous tents that people have erected upon the top of the island. Time to retire and listen to the crickets, coughing, and snoring.
- and do it all again the next day
Some interesting TREK facts
- Trek has a long history. It was started by Geiger in the mid 50's. He was a local pastor and felt the need for youth to have a time away from society. To have the chance to live in Christian fellowship. At the time Dale Hollow Lake was not yet formed. Instead he took the youth camping to the area that currently is Dale Hollow Lake. Years later after they formed Dale Hollow they named one Island afterRay Geiger - Gieger island.
- Several years passed and a Dallas seminary student, Dale Burke, working as youth pastor in a Dallas church wanted to pass along his experience to his youth. So he took the youth up to Dale Hollow lake and began their TREK experience.
- Eventually some of his parishioners came to the Oxford Ohio area and felt the same urge to for Oxford Youth. XXX and XXX started taking youth to Dale Hollow for the OBF Trek
- As time passed, Roger and Jenny moved to Mansfield. Roger and Jenny continued the TREK ministry by including Mansfield youth and the OBF youth.
- And TREK continues today - Families have grown up going to TREK, Roger and Ginny still do TREK - over 22 years of Trek
- TREK supplies all the gear to turn an unimproved island into a week long camping retreat site. We haul out on boats tents, kitchen equipment, a large kitchen tarp, propane stoves, food, water front equipment, safety equipment and the other necessary equipment.
- Families volunteer their boats to come out and act as ferries, tubing boats and transportation
- There is roughly 1 counselor for every 8-10 youth in addition to about another 5-10 adults who cook provide other necessary services.
- Roger facilitated the purchase of 2 double deck pontoon boats that we use for moving kids and gear. It takes roughly 20 boat trips to carry out all the camp equipment, personal gear and campers.
- Willow Grove, a Dale Hollow marina, is very accommodating and acts as the landing location. We purchase all the boat gas, ice and miscellaneous equipment from them during the weeks.
- We use a lot of food. Much of the food is pre-purchased in bulk from professional food companies, but we still make at least 3-4 trips during the week for fresh foods, meat and mild.
- Last year we used:
- 300 gallons of gas
- 200 gallons of milk
- 300lbs of hamburger
- 150 chicken halfs
- purified 500 gallons of water
- Ski'd and tubed 60 hours
- ate 200 candy bars *
- Praised Jesus
- Had a great time
Why don't you consider trek this year?