By Hilary McPherson Craig

WHILE I was growing up, our family had a busy schedule.

In the evenings, my parents spent many hours in the car, driving one of us to soccer and another to baseball practice, before dropping still another off at youth group. Our weekends were full of more games, events and meetings that my parents had to attend or drive one of the kids to. We had the occasional family dinner, but it was often hard to schedule.

One of my parents’ friends suggested we go to Barnabas Family Ministries on Keats Island. I remember my parents telling us we were going for a week at family camp. I didn’t know what to think, as I had never heard of such a thing.

It turned out to be a place that my whole family loved. In our busy schedule, we hadn’t realized how important family time was – until we had a whole week of it. From then on, Barnabas was the highlight of our summer, and something we looked forward to through the school year.

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From this first experience, it became a priority to have more family time together outside of camp. We made more effort to have family dinners and walks together, as well as time praying at night. Barnabas strengthened our family and encouraged us to spend quality time together as a family.

It has been 19 years since we first set foot on Barnabas, and our family still loves it. We don’t go to family camp anymore, but we are still involved with the ministry by volunteering, working on summer staff and serving in whatever way is needed. We know how much it impacted us, and we pray it will continue to impact more families.

It is fun for me to look back at my first experience of Barnabas as a six year old, and see how the ministry has grown since then – with God’s grace and provision.  

It is also exciting for me to look back on our family and see how we have grown, with God’s grace and provision.

June 2010