getting wet for a cause
Shetek Lutheran Ministries’ quilt auction is soaked in success
Each and every year, on what often seems to be the rainiest weekend of the summer, the Shetek Lutheran Ministries Campground is filled with people and quilts. They’ve been hosting their quilt auction for 39 years, typically raising multiple thousands of dollars. The quilts are all donated from local church groups or individuals, most of whom attended the camp in their younger years.
The camp was bought in the 1940s from the State of Minnesota “for pennies,” former Director Jon Hoyme said. The only stipulation was that the land would never be used for private homes, that it would remain a place for the public to gather.
Since the founding of the camp, it’s only grown.
Hoyme, who was the director for 28 years, greatly expanded the camp right from the start of his time as camp director in 1980. Building a new dining hall and new cabins, as well as adding new day camp programs and an environmental education program, the camp took off. This also meant Hoyme’s job began to change.
“We were expanding so much,” he said. “My main job became raising money.”
And in the early 1990s, the auction wasn’t making as much as Hoyme and his team needed to continue to bring their visions for new programing to life. So, to create more excitement about the auction, a tradition was born.
“We needed to drum up excitement about the auction,” Hoyme explained. “Find a way to get people to come out for it.”
He brainstormed with his group of counselors, and they came up with the idea of staff jumping into Lake Shetek each time $1,000 was raised to create more of an incentive for bidders to spend more.
“It seems to have worked!” Hoyme said.
Beginning that year, 1992, Shetek Lutheran Ministries counselors divided up the dollar amounts between themselves and ran for the lake when their number was reached.
Now, counselors draw for their dollar amount or claim the one they want. And with the auction’s success, not every $1,000 mark sends a counselor running anymore.
“I chose $1,000 this year — might as well be first up!” second-year counselor Sydney Brandt said. “I hated the anticipation last year.”
Counselors are luckier some years, but it seems like the past few have been cold, wet, rainy days, meaning jumping in the lake isn’t the most enjoyable thing to do.
But the swim isn’t the only part of the tradition. To involve the bidders, the counselors come back after they take their plunge and hug someone in the crowd. Often, it’s a friend or relative of the counselor, but no one is completely safe.
For Hoyme, traditions like this one are what kept him at camp. A lifelong camp counselor and director, he has worked at over a dozen camps across the Upper Midwest and while still living at Lake Shetek.
“It’s an incredible place,” he said. “It is just incredible to see the impact camp can have on campers and counselors.”
This year the auction raised $40,651.75, which will go toward the Shetek Lutheran Ministries’ annual fund to support campers.
“It helps us keep our fees as low as we can, and then we also have scholarship money available for those campers who may need assistance,” said Marv Nysetvold, executive director at Shetek Lutheran Ministries.
