Dear Buenting family,
It has been a long time since we have reached out to contact all of you. Time has flown. We can hardly believe that 2016 and our reunion year are upon us.
We want to let you know that things ARE in place for the 2016 reunion. It is to be held June 17-19at the Christian Conference Center in Newton, Iowa. (In case you are not already aware, this IS Father’s day weekend.) Some of you may remember this location as we had two previous reunions there. We had stopped using the facility as they changed their fees and policies and were charging a daily fee for the use of the large conference room. Thankfully they have changed their policies again–allowing the use of the large room if we rent some of their on site “motel” rooms.
For those of you who were unable to attend previously when we used this facility, it is a large facility located in a wooded area south of the town of Newton. It is used for church camps and other events. There are on site “motel” rooms as well as cabins for rent in addition to tent and RV sites. Most of our gatherings will be in the large indoor conference room/area. There is air conditioning, an outdoor grill, coffee maker, refrigerator, etc. that we can use. As long as we rent at least 9 motel rooms we get the use of the conference room at no extra charge. There are hiking trails, a mini golf course, a basketball court, and many other things that we can use while we are there. Tent sites are $6 per night. RV sites are $10 per night (electric only). Motel rooms are $75 per night. Each room has two beds, a bathroom, etc. Sharing a room is fine and reservations are to be made through Lindsey and Marian. There is ONE room with three queen beds. One of the rooms is wheel chair ready. The cabins can be rented for $75 per night for a family-parents and all children under 18 (linens not included).
We can arrive as early as 3pm on Friday. As in the past, those of us who attend on Friday evening will discuss what we want to do for supper. Often in the past we have pooled funds for pizza.
Saturday we will plan to do meals together, so bring something to share. We will use the on site grill for grilling meats to go with whatever else we have to share. We will prepare coffee for breakfast and other meals and will try to have juice, iced tea, or lemonade as well. We probably will try to have some pop/soda to go with the pizza on Friday. We have plenty of table service–plates, cups, silverware, and napkins that we will bring. There were no available funds left from the last reunion, but we will bring some food, etc. as our contribution. There are plenty of outlets if you want to bring crock pots and/or roasters.
We hope to plan some fun activities for Saturday e.g. a scavenger hunt, interactive games, etc. We will have some sidewalk chalk, bubbles, etc. to share with children who attend. We plan to contact the local drive-in to see if they might play a family movie on Saturday as it would be fun to attend as a group. We also hope to have a bonfire/campfire on Saturday and/or Friday.
Sunday morning we will again share breakfast from 7-8:30. At 9 a.m we will have our family church service followed by our family meeting. We plan to do group pictures at 10:30 a.m. Our usual potluck meal will be at 12 noon on Sunday. We will have to be out of the building by 2 p.m. and off the grounds by 2:30 p.m. as church campers start arriving shortly after that. So we hope many of you will try to come on Saturday as well as on Sunday in order to have more time to visit and reconnect.
In case some of you missed our last communitcation, we DID pay a $300 deposit for securing the facility. This will need to stay in place if we want to plan the reunion at the same location in the future. Some of you contributed to this already. Thank you! We are hoping others might choose to contribute as there were no remaining funds from the last reunion. You are welcome to do this at the time of the reunion.
We hope to see many of you in June. We know we will be missing many who were regular attendees in the past. We hope some of their children and/or grandchildren will attend in their place. If you would like to attend and need incentive, please let us know what we can do to make the reunion more appealing.
We pray God will be with all of you and look forward to seeing many of you in Newton.
P.S. We know there are musicians, ministers, and writers out there. It would be great to have a concert/concerts and/or a dance as well as book signings and someone to do our Sunday service. Please let us know if you can help with any of these.