Blogs from Giddings, Texas, United States, North America

(Camp Tejas) We took a tour through a 100 year old working cotton gin! I’ve taught about Eli Whitney (1793) and the cotton gin, but really didn’t have the understanding (or interest!) in how it worked. This tour was fascinating! It’s located in a small (very small) town, and once a year they have~~are you ready?~~a Cotton Gin Festival! And they actually gin cotton bolls. Cotton was once the main crop grown in this area, along with tobacco, but now it’s only grown one place, and that’s on the garden-size spot near the cotton gin, and it’s grown for the sole purpose of the Cotton Gin Festival, when they fire up the 1925 diesel engine to demonstrate the whole process. We sat in on a demonstration in the museum and learned how the impact of ... read more

(Camp Tejas) We are back in Giddings, where we were in November, and I have to say I feel like we’re back in the US! There’s a check station on the highways leaving the valley, much like the border crossing into Canada, where they have drug dogs that walk around the vehicles while they ask questions of us. Apparently two white haired people are that threatening, because they didn’t come in and look through our bus, but we could see cars pulled aside that they were searching. When we got through that, it felt like a different country, and the language on the signs is English (mostly!). Bob and I both are really fond of this area. We spent a week at the Village in Smithville, where not only did Bob attend the board meeting, ... read more

(Camp Tejas) Things are happening so fast here that I feel like I’m running to keep up! It’s been cold in the mornings here, so the women have been cleaning the gift shop. (Bob has a theory that many of these camps would go under if the RVICS women didn’t visit their gift shops!) This one has the largest, nicest inventory of any we’ve been to, and was very fun to clean! The men are still working on the conference center…sawing, hammering, and doing guy-stuff. We had Bible study Tuesday night, and then a staff potluck Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday night; after dinner we assembled food baskets for some families the camp is sponsoring. Also Wednesday we met a young couple from France, Emmanuel and Aline, who have been in the United States for several months filming ... read more

(Camp Tejas) Now we’re Texans, and enjoying it. Camp Tejas is about 40 miles east of Austin, outside of Giddings, which is a town of about 5,000. Tejas is Spanish for Texas, and means Friend. It runs summer camps and year round retreats. It’s really two separate camps now, an upper (the newer part), and the main camp. Last summer they had 5400 campers go through here, so you can imagine it’s a huge, active place. Last Saturday we went to Smithville for the Airing of the Quilts. It’s the first time they’ve done it, and after the response they got, the lady from the Chamber of Commerce said it will be an annual event. It’s based on the tradition of women hanging the quilts out to air before winter came, so many quilts were hung ... read more