Warm Beach, Washington

Our church does an annual 4-day camp at Warm Beach Christian Conference Center, just south of Stanwood. The facility if first class. It has a huge set of activities - rope course, climbing tower, horseback riding, hiking, swimming, basketball. And huge fields for any crazy game you might improvise. They improved the food this year. In past years they bordered on insult to our Asian friends with meals of mac and cheese. Those were replaced by rice and teri chicken. Great improvement. I will put my big complaint later.

We have a great time. People come from near and far. First, there are our two churches New Hope International at Mercer Island and Mountlake Terrace. There is a long-time daughter church in Chandler, (Phoenix) Arizona and a new one in Rosemead, California. Both were represented by about ten people. And some people from Las Vegas. There are ten related churches in Thailad, two in Bangkok plus eight more. They were represented by a mother and daughter who have grandchildren/nieces here. And a woman came from Singapore for this camp.

Back to Warm Beach: The service was very good until this year. They downgraded the food service from family-style table service in order "to reduce wasted food." It does reduce waster. But the people serving food went from an attitude of service to "I will stand here and watch you struggle. And be mad if you leave something on the table." Are you a young mother trying to serve and kid (or two) plus yourself? Tough. I rescued a couple of them, but didn't see the 18-year-old servers try it. Coffee? Go beg for it.

My Qwest Internet service sure is slow at night. I can't load a single page now. Just got one - one. What happened to the promised high speed I am paying for?