Today Pioneer Pacific is announcing something we are so excited about. We believe God is calling us to step out in faith to ask Harrison and Alison Berg to join our staff at Pioneer Pacific as the Year–Round Program Director. Over the last decade that I have been the director we have had a very successful summer program but I have had a deep conviction that we need to grow our year-round ministry so that more youth and school groups can come to Pioneer Pacific to learn about Christian Leadership, the Christian life and how to grow in their faith. Harrison has served for many years as a camp summer staff and has had 4 years of experience in year-round positions at Camp Caroline and Gull Lake Centre. Many of you will know Alison because she and the Grandinetti family have been a part of Pioneer for a very long time. Ali was on summer staff for many years on our waterfront team. We have been talking with Harrison and Ali for over five years about joining us on staff and they haveconsidered the previous program director positions, but the timing has just not been right. He and Alli were married in 2015 and are both from Alberta but have always loved going out to the west coast. The goal of their ministry, and life, has been to create space for people to connect with God, others, and themselves. In order to better prepare himself for full time camp ministry Harrison has recently finished his Bachelor of Commerce from MacEwan University. Ali has been a teacher for the last 6 years.
Much of our year-round groups come from of our university campus ministry or from Vancouver Island. We have not had a specific Vancouver Island camp worker living on Thetis for many years. But we believe now is the time that we need to change that. The timing of this announcement may seem a bit strange in the midst of all the uncertainty with the Covid-19 outbreak but we have been working on this for more than a year. We had planned to announce this in the middle of March but now after a short delay we feel now is time to move forward.
We believe that it will take two winter seasons to develop our year-round ministry where we will be able to support the position financially. We are asking the community to give monthly or in one-time gifts to bridge 2 to 3 years of Harrisons salary to provide us time to build deeper relationships with the Vancouver Island community and increase program opportunities. Our goal is to have Harrison and Ali on staff and moved to Thetis by August 1 but because of the unique financial challenges we are facing this year we must have Harrison’s funding in place before he is able to join us on staff. We hope to encourage youth leadership development, outreach programs and Christian retreat options throughout the year. Please join us and we start this new phase. To give please click here and in the select designation field choose Harrison’s name from the list. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at [email protected]a or call 604.616.1925.
