My Windermere Experience
Last year, Windermere celebrated 50 years of ministry. We are collecting and sharing memories of your experiences here. Whether you visited or worked at Windermere, we would like to hear from you. Please email your thoughts to windermere50@windermereusa.org. Thanks for joining us in this time of reflection and celebration.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
My Windermere Experience
Rosemary Hoover
Windermere Board Member
As we pulled out of Windermere Cove, the little red and white aluminum run-about slid across the smooth water and turned left into the Big Niangua. Boat cushions and assorted life jackets lined the floor of the covered bow where our two small children would soon be fast asleep, heads resting on their own puffy orange “Mae West” flotation devices. Thus would begin a life-long love affair with Windermere for those two little sailors. Now grown with water-loving families of their own, they launched their own boats and two Sea-Doos at Briggs Landing last week.
Windermere is that kind of place! It gets in your blood and stays there. Year after year people from everywhere return to refresh their Windermere Experience. Not only is it the most beautiful camp of it’s kind, but it is a place where thousands of people have come to know the God who made it that way.
For 23 years my husband and I we were a part of the Maywood Baptist Church in Independence who considered Windermere “their place at the lake”. Our children grew up going to Windermere with the youth group. Our daughter’s first job was working in the snack shop as a summer staffer. For the past 24 years we’ve been a part of the First Baptist Raytown congregation who also sends bus loads of kids to Camp Windermere every year. Our grandkids go on those buses now.
Last week 70 of us spent five days at Windermere for the Hoover family reunion. We came from nine different states. It was our 31st annual get-together and we’ve never considered going anywhere else. The high-light this year was our sundown praise and prayer service at the prayer chapel on the hill. Our sweet nephew in a wheel chair, his body pale and gaunt from the ravages of cancer was in the middle of it. We sensed it was pivotal for our family and that it was probably his last with us. Thank God for that experience indelibly etched on the hearts of each of us from the youngest, age 1 to the oldest, age 74.
I have a friend who says when she dies, she’s going to Windermere. I think she’s close to right. Windermere is a piece of heaven for us. SEE YOU THERE!
Windermere Board Member
As we pulled out of Windermere Cove, the little red and white aluminum run-about slid across the smooth water and turned left into the Big Niangua. Boat cushions and assorted life jackets lined the floor of the covered bow where our two small children would soon be fast asleep, heads resting on their own puffy orange “Mae West” flotation devices. Thus would begin a life-long love affair with Windermere for those two little sailors. Now grown with water-loving families of their own, they launched their own boats and two Sea-Doos at Briggs Landing last week.
Windermere is that kind of place! It gets in your blood and stays there. Year after year people from everywhere return to refresh their Windermere Experience. Not only is it the most beautiful camp of it’s kind, but it is a place where thousands of people have come to know the God who made it that way.
For 23 years my husband and I we were a part of the Maywood Baptist Church in Independence who considered Windermere “their place at the lake”. Our children grew up going to Windermere with the youth group. Our daughter’s first job was working in the snack shop as a summer staffer. For the past 24 years we’ve been a part of the First Baptist Raytown congregation who also sends bus loads of kids to Camp Windermere every year. Our grandkids go on those buses now.
Last week 70 of us spent five days at Windermere for the Hoover family reunion. We came from nine different states. It was our 31st annual get-together and we’ve never considered going anywhere else. The high-light this year was our sundown praise and prayer service at the prayer chapel on the hill. Our sweet nephew in a wheel chair, his body pale and gaunt from the ravages of cancer was in the middle of it. We sensed it was pivotal for our family and that it was probably his last with us. Thank God for that experience indelibly etched on the hearts of each of us from the youngest, age 1 to the oldest, age 74.
I have a friend who says when she dies, she’s going to Windermere. I think she’s close to right. Windermere is a piece of heaven for us. SEE YOU THERE!
posted by Windermere50 # 2:00 PM
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