Camp David of the Ozarks

We have had a few work teams come out over the past weeks, and are excited about our new entrance at camp!

Here is the youth group from First Baptist in Rolla helping to put a split rain fence at the entrance to camp.

Working hard to dig those holes!

The one side got completely finished…

Then the other week a group of college students with CCF came out and finished the fence on the other side. Now we just need to make a ranch style header with “Camp David” written on it!

We are looking forward to a team of service men and women coming from Fort Leonard Wood this weekend.

Thank you for all your prayers and support.

God bless,

Ben & Grace Smith

There has been a lot of progress at Camp David the past few weeks! March 23-29 we had two groups here helping wherever they could.

A group from Salem Ave. Baptist church came for 6 days and were such a blessing.

This is Pastor Mark Johnson, helping to hang drywall in the new dishwashing room.

As they hung the drywall, they also started drywall mudding it!

The storage room and walk in freezer area are completely drywalled now.

The ladies worked very hard sewing curtains and making Queen size bedspreads into bunk-bed size comforters. They got them all finished and you will see them on the beds in the new staff housing in another email.

During the week that the Salem Ave. group was here, a group of high school students from Iowa Mennonite High School came for a service project. They were a great bunch of young people to work with! Brian and Lynn Yoder led this group.

The teens helped prepare their meals in our little kitchen.

They cleaned up everywhere and made things sparkle!

The girls also spread a lot of mulch around and planted flowers.

One rainy day we all worked to try to organize all the stuff in the building- mainly Ben’s tools and building supplies!

The guys worked on insulating pipes and hanging drywall.

The guys slept in the new staff housing – here they are putting on light switch covers.

Here are the girls helping to install the carpet.

A fun project that week was making animal cut-outs for the petting zoo.

Here is the pig – unpainted.

Here are the finished animals- a pig, a pony, and a goat. They look really cute at the petting zoo!

Praise God for all that was accomplished, and for all the willing helpers. It was great making so many new friends!

Serving Jesus,
Ben and Grace Smith
www.campdavidozarks.org

On February 7th we had a work team from First Baptist, and some other friends, that came to work on Fort Turley.

It turned about to be a fairly warm day and we are so grateful for each person that came out to work.

Hanging drywall in the dish room and storage room.

Cutting out a door.

Cutting sheetrock.

Ken Reynolds and his sons came out and worked hard that day, even staying until late afternoon Saturday.

Our neighbor Bill, enjoys coming to work days and is always a big help.

Our girls, Bethany and Esther, worked hard too by helping Grace tidy up the building.

Work has continued the past two weeks and now all the HVAC is installed, praise God! A big thank you to Arnco, and to Richard and Al for putting in all the rough electric. You can see we have a light in the kitchen now!

We are delighted to announce that at Camp David’s annual Banquet of Hope last night, there was $10,000 raised toward the completion of Fort Turley. Another $7,000 was raised in pledges and camper sponsorships. So we have ordered more building supplies today, and we will be working on drywall and framing tomorrow, Saturday, February 21st. We are still working towards our goal of having the staff housing finished by March 21st, and any help would be appreciated.

We praise God for His abundant provision and answered prayer. He is good, and His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.

Serving Jesus,
Ben Smith

A lot of progress was made at Camp David of the Ozarks last week!

Here are Al Brophy and Steve running electrical wires in the new kitchen area.

Richard Light also donated his time to work on the electrical.

Arnco workers installing the HVAC in the staff housing.

On Saturday, January 24th, the temperature went way down and it was very cold to be working on the building, but we actually had our largest team this year that day! From left to right: the Reynold’s gang (Ken, Barney, Gideon, and Alex), Ben, and the Eli Lee gang (there are 10 in their family!).

Eli and his sons worked on hanging drywall on the ceiling of the future bathrooms.

Here is Eli’s wife Leah, and some of their girls, and some of the Marchbank gang (there were 8 Marchbanks!)

Dad Smith and Amy and Todd also joined us! We all sat around a small propane heater trying to not freeze!

I, Grace, am very grateful to a friend, Grace Madigan, for generously providing lunch for the team of workers. The Lee family also brought yummy pies and the Marchbanks brought a large pot of good ‘ol mac and cheese. There was enough food for everyone!

Matt Marchbank sealed off all the attic spaces so we could blow insulation in the attic.

Downstairs, the drywall continues to go up!

A big thank you to Richard Byfield for loaning us the drywall lift and heater.

The Lee sisters help their dad in construction and they were very experienced in using screw guns, hammers, and the sawsall.

Sarah is helping to hang drywall.

The Reynold’s boys worked to get the greenboard on the bathroom walls.

Esther and Hannah had fun together!

Reuben helped to clean up wood scraps around the construction zone.

Thawing out in our home in the afternoon! Chris Marchbank took care of all the little ones in our warm home and also got the camper newsletters ready to mail.

Laura and Esther and the other young ladies made sure the workers had hot chocolate and coffee while they worked! Praise God for all the eager hands to help work!

This is the first year that we’ve started work on the building in this cold weather, but it is so exciting to see progress. Our goal is to have the upstairs staff housing finished by mid- March so that we can host several work teams in March and April. This past Saturday, Jan 24, was only about 20 degrees outside, but we had about 30 people here working! And God is providing the money each step of the way, or He is laying on individual hearts to donate the needed items like the furnace, electric panel, and lights.Â

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It’s been a busy week here at Camp David…

Ben rented an excavator and dug over 800 feet in trenches for the septic line.

On Thursday, a team from UPS came out and helped on the front porch roof. Sadly enough, the electricity was out and progress was slow.

Thanks UPS for coming out to help!

Lots happened on Saturday… Virgil Bartle brought out his skid steer to grade around the building, and we realized in order to get the proper grade we had to take out some trees.

It rained hard for about 2 hours, so after getting the first two trees out, most of the work went on pause.

We’ll have to finish grading in a few days because of the mud. But we like the new look to the building front!

Elizabeth and Crystal helped clean up the building!

James Mosher got all the electric in the dining hall working (finally the outlets all work)! Yeah!!

Frank Ratliff and Bob Scott worked on the plumbing…

And the team from HSA worked hard to finish the front porch roof and…

The sheathing on the new addition.

Rich and Mr. Phillips, and Joel and Tom Eldredge, JR.

These guys worked hard and fast.

What a view!

It’s finished!

Wisdom Roofing will be here early this week to put the shingles on.

Diane Phillips cooked for everyone! Her daughter Mary, and I (Grace) worked to get the shower houses all fixed up and running again.

The second side is getting done.
Thanks HSA work team and friends for all your help!

Praise God for all that was accomplished.

Please pray for more laborers this week to help get ready for our first week of camp on June 2nd. Please call 573-364-2786 if you can help anytime. We need help with cutting up trees, finishing the pipes in the trenches, construction, and hanging drywall. There is also grass to be mowed and weedwacking.

Also, continue to pray for funds for the insulation, drywall, and everything else. You can donate online at www.campdavidozarks.org

“Come and see what God has done” Psalm 66:5

Serving Jesus,

Ben and Grace Smith

P.S. Please pray for Ben and I to have strength and peace during this time.

The constuction and camp preparations continued at Camp David this past weekend…

We were blessed to have a group of 9 from the Rooftop Community Church in St. Louis. They planted flowers, worked in the garden, cleaned picnic benches…

Here are Cindy and Nicole painting a wall for the “Nature Center”. Thanks guys for your hard work!

We also had several friends come from different churches in Rolla to help on the building. They were able to start setting the side trusses.

The is the west side all done.

Here’s Lee holding a truss while…

Todd used the nail gun to secure it in place.

Dad Smith helped get the support beams anchored.

The kids all had fun together too, in fact they even worked hard for a while!

This is Jonathon, and he really worked hard =)

The kids are so excited about our improvement to the Cowboy Forts- slides!

Enjoying sitting on their new mulched area!

This week and weekend we are pushing hard to get the rest of the trusses up and the roof finished. We have a HSA (Homeschool Alumni) group coming this Saturday, and we would like to invite anyone else who is able to help. Even if you aren’t skilled in construction we still have mulch to spread and other areas to clean before Junior Staff Training starts May 27th.

We have continued to make progress this week as we got the septic tank installed, and tomorrow we are digging trenches. We were very blessed with generous donations of labor (Gray Trucking) and materials (Merdon Inc.) for this system. We were also excited to learn that Bloomsdale Excavating is going to donate labor to help us in the final part of the septic system. God is good.

Please continue to lift us in prayer and pray for a miracle that we could have the funds and workers to get the new building functioning by June!

Thanks for your prayers and support.

Serving Jesus, Ben and Grace Smith

Please call Ben at 573-308-0602 if you can help this week or weekend.

Last weekend, May 9-10, we had three families from the Osage Beach area come camp out and work on Fort Turley.

We met Ed and Liz at the SHEM Homeschool Conference and they introduced us to Ed’s boss- a general contractor. The families camped out in the covered wagon cabins Friday night!

This is the Roberts family. There were lots of little children and all our kids had a great time together!

The team started with putting sheathing on the building. Mark was the General Contractor and 5 of his crew helped that day!

This is a view from the back corner…

Then they set the floor trusses on the second floor, and began putting plywood on top. Here is Mark handing the plywood up.

The second floor of Fort Turley will have two large rooms for staff girls. We will be able to sleep 20 staff girls up there when we are finished!

Here are the men working hard to get the floor down! We are so grateful for their gift of time and labor.

They did run into some problems with connecting the old building to the new with a different truss system and other complications. This slowed work down and we didn’t get as much done as we hoped. We have since figured out solutions to the problems and hope to move forward again.

Please pray with us that God will send skilled help this week and weekend, so we can finish the upstairs and set the roof trusses. It is our hope to see the roof go on next week.

If you can help, please give us a call!

Serving Jesus,

Grace Smith, Assistant Director

We have some exciting pictures to share with you from Saturday, May 3rd!

We had over 30 people out to help at camp, and the big project was framing in the kitchen and bathrooms on Fort Turley.

We had teams from the First Baptist Church, Church without Walls, Vineyard, and the Eli Lee family. It was amazing to see how everyone worked together to get so much done!

The back wall goes up!

David and Paul worked on cleaning the forms used on the foundation.

These gentlemen from First Baptist finished fencing in our Discovery Garden, including hanging the gate, and building the boxes for the vegetables.

Another group helped to rake and burn leaves in the covered wagon area.

Here is the finished garden with all the veggie plants and seeds planted!

The teams also worked on the front porch for Fort Turley!

Here is how it is coming together.

Back over at the building site, the rooms are taking shape. This picture was taken from one of the bathrooms looking toward the kitchen area.

Ben and Ron discussing the work project!

The Lee children were incredible- here are two sons balancing on the walls as they worked!

A view of the finished walls from the back. We will be getting the floor trusses and building the second floor for staff housing this coming weekend.

This is a view from the east side.

Please continue to keep the construction in your prayers. God is continuing to send it funds, and we have work teams scheduled for every weekend this month. Pray for lots of workers and safety as we work, and for continued funds to complete the project.

God is good all the time. Praise Him for all the work accomplished and all the willing hands and hearts that came.

Serving Jesus,

Ben and Grace Smith