On June 26^th, 2003, five Olympic View youth and two adults embarked on a ten-day "Workcamp" adventure. The youth were Amber Gooden, Sara Abraham, Heather Kissinger, Kelati Andemichael, and Alex Eyob. The adults were Kathy and Roger Edmark. We loaded up the church van with suitcases,sleeping bags, gardening tools, a cooler, tent and snacks, and headed south.

Our adventure took us from Washington to Oregon to California to Oregon to Idaho, to Oregon and back to Washington before we were done. The workcamp part of the adventure was to clean up an old Brethren heritage cemetery in Talent Oregon. Talent is just north of Ashland, Oregon on old Highway 99. The church that had been next to this cemetery no longer exists, thus there is no one to keep up the cemetery. On our way to Talent, we met with the Lacey youth; heard about the old cemeteries and churches from Dennis Roth, church historian; overnighted at the Ullery home in Lacey; attended church at Lacey Community Church; visited the capitals in Olympia, WA and in Salem, Oregon; explored another Brethren cemetery in Mabel, Oregon; ate dinner with Kathy’s brother and wife, Steve and Merilee Boulton, in Marcola (Steve helped us find the Mabel cemetery); and then stayed the night at the Springfield church.

The Talent Cemetery was overgrown with waist high grass and weeds and brambles. The cemetery is about a 100 x 100 foot square. Our first impression was that it would take much longer than we had originally expected, and that maybe it was not possible for the seven of us to get it done. After surveying the cemetery, we headed for an equipment rental store to see if we could find something to help us. We found a great invention, a "weed whacker on wheels". With one person operating the machine and six cleaner-uppers, we managed to successfully clean up 90% of the cemetery before the machine quit working. Cleaning up the cemetery took about 14 hours of work, or about 100 hours of total labor. The seven of us all worked hard, with few complaints, in spite of several cuts and bruises, and very tired bodies.

Our adventure did not stop there. Our next destination was the Song and Story Fest at Camp Wilber Stover in Idaho. On the way we stopped to see the beautiful blue waters of Crater Lake. At Song and Story Fest there were many activities for youth and adults. Frosty, Nancy-Louise and Christine Wilkinson greeted us when we arrived. The youth learned a difficult song at a workshop with Shawn Kirshner in the morning and then presented it at lunch the same day. A fun activity that several of the youth did was to go swimming at Zim Pool, which has two pools, one hot, and one really hot, fed by a hot springs.

Our last leg of the adventure was to participate at Annual Conference, so we headed down to Boise. Our first night in Boise was the 4^th of July with fireworks at the Boise fairgrounds. We camped on the lawn of the Mt. View COB in Boise while we stayed there. The conference program for youth was excellent, with great speakers, good music, and insightful workshops. The youth went to a food bank to sort and box food, and while there, several TV stations taped the outing and showed it on the evening news. They also went to a water park, attended conference worships each day, and explored an old gold rush town called Idaho City. We also saw so many of our church family from Olympic View at conference. Don Eikenberry, a former Olympic View member now living in Spokane, came down to help with the youth for two days as well.

It was a great trip - long to be remembered. We want to thank the church and all of the people who supported our fundraisers and support us with prayers and gifts and a van to get us there. You made it possible for us to go! We also want to thank all of the people along the way who went out-of-their-way to help us, especially Howard and Diana Ullery, Dennis Roth and the Lacey Church, Jan Fairchild, Hal Sheller, and the Springfield Church, and David McKellip and the Mt. View Church, as well as the hospitality and resourcefulness of Steve and Merilee Boulton.