Rock Nest Men’s Work Trip
ROCK NEST RANCH MEN’S MISSION WORK TRIP PROPOSAL 2024
Quick Info:
- Dates: Fri, Oct 11 – Sun, Oct 20, 2024
- Cost: $375
- Application Due Date: Sun, Aug 18 w/ $100 deposit
- Remaining Money Due Date: Sun, Sept 29
- Other Requirement: Up-to-Date Passport (Can’t be just an Enhanced ID)
- Why Go: it’s going to be so much fun and it’s such a great opportunity to serve the Lord together.
What are we doing:
Rock Nest Ranch is a large facility with a small missionary staff. As such, there are always many maintenance and work project needs. There are needs for work on bunks, work on cabins, work on some lodge repairs, and other project needs are always popping up. We also either need someone willing to be our head cook, or we will need to rotate the cooking work among the team members.
Who:
It is an open invitation for men of all ages from EBC. The hope is that we will get a team of 6-12 men. The first opportunity will go to men who attend EBC. However, if there are men who don’t attend EBC, but who have an interest participating, we may be able to include others with us, depending on the number of men who sign up from EBC.
We are open to anyone joining the team, regardless of skill level on construction and maintenance projects. If you have significant skills, that will be rather useful. And if you have very few skills, we will help you learn some new skills, which is also rather useful!
When:
Friday, October 11 – Sunday, October 20, 2024. We will leave early in the day on Friday, October 11 and arrive home in the evening of Sunday, October 20.
Why should you go:
This is a great opportunity to put your time, energy and a little money toward “building up treasure in heaven” by giving our bodies, skills, and willing hearts to prepare a place for kids, teens, and families to hear and respond to the gospel. The work we will be doing represents a real need, helping maintain a facility that serves to bring the gospel to people who otherwise are fairly unlikely to hear it.
At the same time, these kinds of trips are also as much a blessing to those who go as those who we are serving. To state it plainly, I expect these 10 days of traveling together and working together to be a ton of fun. We will have the opportunity to develop relationships with one another far deeper than we could if we simply talked week after week after a worship service. In addition to the hard work, we will certainly laugh, goof around, and enjoy being together. We will see beautiful sights as we travel, and we will stay together in an incredible lodge. There’s just something special that happens when men come together for a work project! We get a chance to know one another, encourage one another, and help one another get our eyes clearly on Christ. I expect it to be a joyful and refreshing trip!
How would we get there:
The plan is to use vehicles from team members. It is roughly a 16-hour drive, and we would plan to break that drive up into two days. On Friday, October 11 we would travel from Vancouver to Cache Creek, BC. Then on Saturday, October 12 we would drive from Cache Creek to Houston, BC, where Rock Nest Ranch is located.
Why are we going:
Having just begun to financially partner with Rock Nest Ranch via our missions budget, and with having Doug Anderson come as our Men’s Retreat speaker, it seems like a uniquely strategic time to have a men’s work mission trip. This opportunity is rather affordable and should only require most participants to take off a week and a day.
This also provides a practical opportunity for men with maintenance / construction skills to use their skills to bless this ministry, while also providing an opportunity for men without those skills to learn some of those skills.
What is Rock Nest Ranch:
Rock Nest Ranch is a camp in Houston, BC, Canada. It exists primarily to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to First Nations kids, teens, and families. Rock Nest is a ministry of UIM International (formerly known as United Indian Mission). UIM has 6 missionary couples who live in the vicinity of Rock Nest Ranch (within a few hours), who are working with First Nations populations, seeking to establish churches and disciple believers among various First Nations reserves in the area. For many kids, teens, and even families, it is at Rock Nest where they first hear the Gospel and experience the love of Christ, lived out through the camp staff.
What will the work week look like:
We will spend Oct 11-12 traveling all day. We will wake up Sunday and attend church at Kyah Bible Fellowship in Witset, BC. That is the church pastored by our recent men’s retreat speaker, Doug Anderson. We will get a good look at the projects ahead on Sunday, and perhaps will also do some shopping for food and getting things ready for the week ahead. We will also get a sense for the work ahead, and get a good understanding of the tools and materials available for the projects. Monday through Friday we will hit the ground running, working hard all day, each day. We will break for lunch, and then probably end our work day at dinner time. We will look for some time each evening to spend some time in the Bible and in prayer together, as well as having time to relax together, playing games or doing other things that help us wind down for the evening. We will end our work on Friday, and on Saturday we will hit the road for the two day trip home to Vancouver.
Other details:
- Each man participating needs to have an up-to-date passport. An enhanced ID won’t be sufficient, as we each will need to get volunteer work visas, which require a passport. One of the missionaries in BC will do the work of preparing the work visas for us, so we don’t need to solve how to do that on our own.
- Each man will be responsible to pay for food on their own on the trip. There are fast-food options along the way in many towns (DQ, A&W, Subway, etc), as well as grocery stores where food could be purchased. We won’t plan to bring much food across the border, as that creates potential border-cross challenges.
- We may or may not be able to bring some of our own tools with us. I will need to talk with the folks up North to get clarity on what is likely to be allowed, and what may get us turned away at the border. As you may imagine, the Canadian government is leery of letting non-residents come into the country and take paying work from residents. So we will follow the advice of the folks who know best, and that will determine whether we bring some of our own tools, or if we use the tools that the camp owns. At the same time, we know that space in always at a premium on trips, so if we are able to bring tools with us, we will still have to do some limiting for the sake of space available in vehicles.
What is the cost breakdown per person: There is no expectation that there will need to be any funding from the church, nor any fundraisers done on behalf of the team.
- Days at Rock Nest – 6 Days at Rock Nest at $15/ day = $90 CAD / $65 US
- Gas = $142
- 2200 Miles at 22 MPG and $5/gallon
- Assuming 3.5 people per car
- Food at Camp = $12 per day x 6.5 = $78
- Food on the road = On Your Own
- Hotel = $90 (two nights in Cache Creek)
- Total = $375 / per person + $ for food while travelling
More Questions?
Don’t hesitate to reach out to Pastor Ryan Donovan to ask any other questions you may have.