The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - Thirty local teenagers will be head­ing off to Young Life and Wyldlife camps starting this week, and long-time Young Life volunteer leaders Jeff and Lori Bartlow will be along for what should be a Wyld and fulfilling ride.

Young Life, a non-de­nominational Christian high school youth ministry founded in the 1950s, has been operating in Waitsburg since 1999. Wyldlife, the middle school ver­sion of Young Life, began operating in the community not long after. Prescott Community Church pastor at-the-time, Doug Barram, served as the spark and catalyst for the program locally.

"He came out and did Young Life for several years to kind of get us jumpstarted," Lori Bartlow recalled. "One of the things (Young Life) likes to do is try to get a group of kids together to go to camp and get excited about Young Life. In Jeff's first year, he took five or six boys to camp. That was in 2000."

"A couple years later, when (daughter) Ellie, was in sixth grade, Cory DeB­ritz, the Young Life head in Walla Walla got Marilyn and Rob­bie Johnson, and Veronica Deal and I to go to camp with a bunch of Wyldlife kids, and we've ba­sically gone every year since," Lori Bartlow said.

Wyldlife camp is held at Washing­ton Family Ranch, on the site of the old Rajneeshipuram commune at An­telope, Oregon. Washington Fam­ily Ranch is divided into two full-size camps-The Ranch for high schoolers and Creekside for Wyldlife middle schoolers.

"The two camps are side- by-side but you can't see one from the other and they don't mix," said Lori Bart­low. "This is Creekside's third summer of existence. It has a mining theme. It's got water slides and pools, and everything looks like an old mining town. They built a 'hugacious' barn where they have a ropes course, minia­ture golf, and three indoor basketball courts."

The camp was established by a man named Washington who bought up the old com­mune in hopes of turning it into a Sun River-type resort. When efforts to change the zoning of the land from ag­riculture failed, Washington donated it and several mil­lion dollars to Young Life. Young Life volunteers were able to get the neighbors to agree to a zoning switch and the first camp was born.

The Bartlows left for Creekside with 18 middle schoolers on Tuesday. On August 11, they will venture out again, this time with 12 high schoolers, to central reaches of the coast of Brit­ish Columbia, to take part in one of the older and more famous Young Life camps at Malibu, B.C.

"We'll take a charter bus to Vancouver, then get on a boat and go up the Princess Inlet," Lori Bartlow said. "You can only get there by boat or by plane. There are no roads."

This will not be Bartlows first trip to Malibu. She also went as a 17-year old in 1982.

Young Life Camp- ers from Waitsburg enjoying the the camp at Washington Family Ranch in years past.

"I went to Malibu when I was going to be a senior at Pomeroy," Bartlow said. "They had Young Life there for about four years. It was run by a dynamic Christian man from WSU who would bring four WSU kids every week down to Pomeroy. But Young Life stopped when he graduated from college. It wasn't around when I got into high school, but I knew about camp and wanted to go, so my friend and I went with the Clarkston group."

The philosophy of Young Life is relationship building. Leaders develop relation- ships and trust with kids and Bartlow says hopefully the kids see something in their lives that's missing.

"You have to earn the right to be heard. You earn the right to tell them the story of Jesus," said Bartlow. "Instead of just coming from a stranger, you develop a re- lationship with them, so you can share Christ with them. You've earned the right to do that."

Bartlow has seen a good impact on kids from going to camps, but she admits more needs to be done with mentoring kids after they return.

Regular Young Life meet- ings occur on Wednesday once a month at the Bartlow's house on Coppei Av- enue. Wyldlife meets on Fri- day once a month at Preston Hall.