I ran across an old photo today of the 1928 camp meeting at Devil's Lake, North Dakota. I received the photo some years ago while we were visiting family on their Western Dakota ranch.

I was amazed to hear Aunt Hazel tell how things were back then, as she pointed out several of my mother's older brothers and sisters in the photo. Travel and accommodations were very primitive by today's standards. Yet these hearty pioneers of faith valued coming together to encourage one another and to pool their resources to advance God's kingdom.

Typically, camp meeting was the time when big dreams and initiatives were shared for home and foreign missions. Plans for evangelism and raising new churches and schools were formed. In response, people gave sacrificially to see their dreams accomplished. I wonder what it must have been like for a simple Scotts-Irish horse trainer/carpenter/handyman to support five children at the beginning of the Depression.

Ten years and four children later, Grandad and Grandma loaded mom with her brothers and sisters in the shelter built on the back of a truck (a scene right out of "Grapes of Wrath"), and made their way west in search of Christian education.

The last child was born before they arrived in the Walla Walla Valley, where Grandad managed to finance all ten children, and a few fatherless ones from the community (my dad being one of them), through Christian education. Self-sacrificing partnership with God produces miracles. I know. I'm one of them.

Gary Burns is the communication director of the Lake Union Conference.