After almost 20 years of bouncing from campground to campground, Orr Family Ministries finally found its home in 2022 on a 12-acre tree-filled campground located on a hill in Colorado County.Kids played in the swimming pool, worshipped by the fire pit, and watched the sunset over the hill while learning about Bible stories.They called it Camp Oak Haven, providing refuge for about 100 children from surrounding low-income and rural communities.But, this summer, Camp Oak Haven won’t be reopening. Orr Family Ministries has sold the land because it could not meet sweeping regulations the state abruptly placed on the camp industry.“We are sad. It’s terrible. We had church groups coming, and we had to give back deposits, and I don’t know where those kids will go,” said Cynthia Royal, Orr Family Ministries board president. “The dent is in these rural communities where kids or parents don’t have huge incomes to send them to a huge mega camp miles away.”
After the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods that killed 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, Texas lawmakers required youth camps to implement a slew of new safety requirements, including weather warning systems and having fiber optic internet, and pay thousands of dollars more in licensing fees.
