Gems of the Ochocos

John may have smelled like smoke when he boarded the plane to Central Oregon in November 2016. He agreed to fly up from Colorado to consult on a potential camp purchase by a gentleman he had worked for when he was a young man. John was just the guy for the job.

Three months earlier, John and Cheree Davis lost their home and all of their contents in a fire in Colorado. Praise be to God no one was hurt in the fire. It is a story for another day, but rest assured the fire was a big tool in getting them from Colorado to Oregon. John thought he was just helping a friend with some sound advice on this camp evaluation, but he was actually making his first advance towards moving to Oregon and getting the Ochoco Christian Conference Center up and running.

John and Cheree have been in Christian Camp ministry for just over thirty years. They met at Green Oak Ranch in Vista, California in their college years. After school and marriage, they both worked at Angeles Crest Christian Camp. Their first daughter was born in 1991 followed by twin girls sixteen months later. They homeschooled and worked in California and were transferred to Horn Creek Christian Camp in Westcliffe, Colorado at the base of the Rocky Mountains in December of 2013. John served as the facilities manager and Cheree handled guest services.

The Horn Creek Christian Camp was a Mom and Pop camp that operated year round drawing folks for family camps from Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma. The camp was purchased by a large corporate operator, and after restructuring, John’s job was eliminated.

John thought he would try driving big rigs for a change. God had other plans. Out of the crystal-clear blue sky came a telephone call from a friend for John to consult on the former Mt. Bachelor Academy in the Ochoco mountains east of Prineville, Oregon. The camp was completely defunct and had been dormant for years while it was for sale. A gentleman from Christmas Valley was able to fulfill his lifetime dream of starting a Christian youth camp, and the camp was in his hands on November 11, 2016, some weeks after John had first laid eyes on the place.

John and Cheree fell into camp operations like two squares of sugar in your morning coffee. They moved what very little they had left after their home fire to the rundown camp in Prineville, Oregon in January, 2017 and never looked back. When they arrived, snow covered the camp property and the only life they observed besides their own breathing selves was Red, the resident caretaker. The only utility at their disposal was electricity. They slept on the floor, warmed by wall heaters and carried water from a nearby outbuilding in 5-gallon jugs for all of their personal needs.

John repaired broken water and propane pipes, worked on old equipment, bought new equipment, and gradually brought the camp up to speed day by day. They hosted groups that first year just months after moving in. The camp had around 300 guests in 2017 for youth camps, all from Christmas Valley. They had almost 1,500 guests in 2021 and over 1,600 in 2022. The 2023 calendar has exploded.

Cheree is not one to sit on the sofa and observe the sheen of her fingernails, oh no. To see her, she is a beautiful woman with a dazzling smile, but like a hummingbird she is not still long. She zips around the camp doing one thing and another and another. She set herself to communicating and organizing group events at the camp. She developed forms, procedures, marketing tools, bookkeeping, and just about everything that does not involve water, power, wood, and propane.

While John studied Missions at Northwest Christian College, Cheree’s degree from Biola is in Recreation and Camp Administration. Camp Ministry is not only a Christian college degree track, but it is a spiritual gift, and Cheree has it. Team Davis works seamlessly together passing the baton back and forth between lovely guest services, great food, and wonderful activities in a warm and inviting environment.

By the nature of the work, camp ministry knows no real work schedule or job description. Thirty years in and this duo understands where their strengths lie and how to divide the work. John runs the kitchen and handles much of the maintenance and repair work around camp. Cheree gets the groups in the door on the proper calendared dates with all of the appropriate paperwork in place. Over the six years the camp has been under their watchful eyes, they have done this all with minimal additional paid staff.

They serve with joy and love keeping things safe, warm, and spiritually fulfilling, always supporting the objectives of the people they serve. Groups of all different types use the camp in addition to primarily youth: men’s groups, women’s groups, special interest groups, and church family camps..

The Lord is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He uses miracles, weather, agriculture, rivers, watercraft, crosses, tombs, and more miracles to accomplish His goals. He has called forth volunteers to come alongside John and Cheree to work at the OCCC, but the volunteers are the ones that come away with the blessing.

It took me one hour door to door to drive from Bend to OCCC. I had the pleasure of working alongside John and his sidekick, Shade, in the kitchen for a weekend while they hosted a ladies retreat for a group from Prineville. At the end of our time together I was reminded of what our camp friends in Latvia always say. It is not about the hours of work or the job that is done that means so much—and it means a ton. It is so much more the encouragement a volunteer brings to the workers with boots on the ground every day. The fact that you are taking your time to spend it in the hula-hoop of someone else’s mission field fills their hearts with fresh energy straight from the Spirit.

Foundry Church has always been enormously generous and especially in the area of missions. The church intentionally split their mission target into two areas—local and global—and provided an oversight team for each in an effort to serve both sectors better. Following an annual review, each missionary is sent their monthly financial support. Occasionally, contact is made from a member of the support team to check in.

In my experience, nothing compares to putting your feet on the soil where our missionaries serve 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their unique challenges are not translatable on paper, and the measure of God’s blessing poured out and overflowing cannot be described. Get yourself an audience with someone who has served alongside the team at Ochoco Christian Conference Center, and you will see that glow that comes from being in the presence of where God is working. Go ahead. Try it. I dare you.

Who would have guessed that you could put people from Foundry Church, Christmas Valley, Latvia, and a couple of gems from Colorado into a hat and pull out a sparkling trophy called Ochoco Christian Conference Center? Not I.