Some familiar faces in the 80’s and beyond were Pal and Wynette Laws. Their daughter, Sherry Pierce, shared memories with us that many others can relate to who have “grown up” at Joy El. She shares, “We visited when I was in second grade or so for a couple weeks to check it out. Then my parents started working there in 1987 and were there until about 2003 or so, and I was involved almost every summer until I was married.
Sherry spent time as a student working in the kitchen with Sam and Helen Needy. She has several thoughts about serving in the kitchen:
- My favorite meals that Sam Needy made were his Thanksgiving menus and the pork roll at breakfast. The clever among us recognized all the leftover rolls, bread and pancakes in the stuffing. Helen’s self-mixed cookies and cream ice cream were favorites on banquet night.
- As a staff kid new to Pennsylvania, I was excited when the menu at our first staff night was waffles. Nobody told me that Pennsylvanians put chicken gravy on them. What?!
- I remember the summer we were VERY blessed with local donations of peaches. So blessed that almost every dessert contained peaches!
- One of the funniest memories in the kitchen was me thinking they had an iced tea maker when it was actually a giant, industrial potato peeler.
Being a part of Living Miracles and helping with music at camp brought back special memories as well:
- The summer I participated in music ministry with Curtis Martin, we probably went to sleep with “King Jesus is All” or “The Lord Has a Will” stuck in our brains. My earliest memories of music at Joy El of course include Nancy Fritz and the Camp Joy El theme song. She was great at getting a crowd of children involved. The music was usually my favorite part when I was a camper. “He’s Still Working on Me” is a song I now sing to my own children.
- Gregg Garman was very influential in my life. The Living Miracles had visited the camp we worked at in North Carolina. When we moved to Pennsylvania years later, knowing that I might get to eventually sing in “Uncle Gregg’s” group was one of the only things that excited me about being uprooted in the middle of my 8th grade year. It was fun to have him as camp director, and the friends I made through camp that first year gave me the foundation I needed and a group to be with when I was uprooted a year later and put into yet another school district.
Some of her other thoughts about her time at Joy El have a lot of meaning to her (and to us!)
- The ability to go on mission trips with camp, first to Mexico and then to Brazil, was more fuel on the fire of God leading me overseas for much of my adult life and now working with refugees here in the US.
- It is precious to look back at some of the campers and staff kids and see how God has transformed them through the years and is using them in neat ways. The quiet staff kid with cowboy boots is now a loving husband and dad and businessman. One of my quiet junior counselors has been serving the Lord as a doctor overseas. Different campers are teachers, training the current generations.
- Camp gave me many opportunities to succeed but also to grow where I needed to grow and fail gracefully sometimes and learn from those times, as well.
