Brightwood Ranch: Building Lives Worth Living

Last week we spent a few days at Brightwood Ranch in Alberta. We knew nobody at the camp, nor had any of us ever been there before. Basically, we found this guy Brent (who happened to be the camps director), in a directory of people that welcome travelers to stay for a day or two on their journey. We were very stoked as we soon realized that Brent is perhaps the most interesting man in Alberta. To the 80 or so campers he is know by his camp name, Old Spice. But he let us call him Brent. Brightwood Ranch is a camp run for underprivileged kids. Their main partner is Hope Mission in Edmonton (which is also a sweet organization). The facilities were fabulous. Coming from a fairly extensive camp background, I talked to Old Spice about various things such as how his camp is run, the different programs and staff hiring. I quickly realized that his camp runs like a well oiled machine. The activities that the campers can take part in are almost endless. Whether they want to play some sports, ride some horses (it is a ranch after all), go biking, hiking, zip-lining or just hang out at the petting zoo, its all there. Wait, why not some archery, riflery or rock climbing? Old Spice and his team of essentially international volunteer staff make it all happen. We loved this place.

But in the nature of our trip, we obviously couldn't just hang around and play games all day (although we would have loved to) so we asked Brent to find us some work to do. For our first day there, we drove into the middle of a 13,000 acre cow pasture and set up a campsite for a horse camp that was starting in a few weeks. This location was literally in the middle of no where and we drove through fields and forests on unimproved roads to get there. It is definitely an incredible location to learn and grow.

The next day, we helped Brent with some stuff that wasn't quite camp related. We helped him move his uncle into a new place. This was also a ton of fun as we got to hear some neat stories and also share our story with him. When we found his vintage hat collection and showed extreme fascination, he let us each take one for helping him out. That alone made the day awesome. You should see some of the beauties we found.

That night we went back to camp and participated in some activities. We hung out by the campfire, played a sweet wide game with the kids and got to know some of the staff. While a lot are from the west coast or around the world, there were quite a few from Ontario and some of us even had mutual friends which is always great. We are super thankful for our time at Brightwood especially because they fed us and let us shower during our stay. We also now have some leads on places to stay in B.C. which we are stoked about. So to all our friends at Brightwood, thanks so much and God bless you guys as you dedicate your summer to serving kids!

To read more about what Brightwood does, Click Here.
Cheers,The Boys
Post by JE