Dear Presbytery of Olympia and to all this may concern,

My husband and I have been going to Sound View collectively for over 20 years. We met at Sound View and we both have grown up in the Camper program, LIT Program and we have been summer staffers and volunteers since 2008.

We are writing this letter to implore you to keep Sound View Camp open. This camp has changed our lives as well as countless others. We wish we could be at the Presbytery meeting to try and explain to you and show you how much it would mean to us, the Sound View family, and many others who still wish to attend Sound View in the future if you would help keep it open.

Sound View has been home to my husband and I for many years now and we would genuinely be lost without it. Camp is what made us who we are and continues to have a grip on our day to day lives. We have so many ideas and plans for Sound View that we wish to do and try. If we could afford to buy camp ourselves and keep it running, we would do it in a heartbeat. We have given so much of our heart and soul to camp that we would literally be losing a piece of ourselves if we didn’t have Sound View.

We have seen kids come and go throughout our years at Sound View. Some of them stay and become incredible staffers, and some of them we never see again, but the change we see in them in a week of camp can be nothing but Godly. We truly believe that God wants Sound View to stay open and continue running for the kids and adults who are touched beyond words from their time there.

Please take this into careful consideration that there would be many hearts broken and many more souls lost if you were to close down Sound View Camp. We are not done yet with our mission there. God is not done yet, bringing people of all ages to Him through camp.

Remember this passage in Matthew chapter 18 verses 15:
“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Please allow us to continue welcoming children of God into Sound View and helping us do Christ’s work there.

God bless,
Stephanie & Michael Groth

Testimonials