Help us Finish the James Farr Workshop

I’m honored to share that the Hidden Acres Board voted unanimously to name our new workshop in memory of our dear friend and former Board Chairman, James Farr.

James poured his heart into seeing this building become a reality, and now we have the privilege of finishing what he started.

The James Farr Workshop will be more than a place to house equipment—it will be a place for equipping leaders. Within its walls, we will store the tools and resources needed to keep Hidden Acres running, while also creating classroom spaces where young people can gain hands-on skills that will serve them for a lifetime. This is a key part of our mission to make Hidden Acres a place set apart to experience Christ, expand community, and equip leaders.

Thanks to generous supporters, we’ve made great progress—electricity is connected, the water cutoff is installed, and all the dirtwork is complete. Next step is to finish out and trim the building.

The rough estimated cost to complete the building is $75,000, with an additional $10,000 to fully furnish it as an educational facility. In a beautiful tribute to James, a generous donor has offered a matching gift of up to $50,000 in his memory to help us finish strong. We’ve already received $28,000 toward this match, and your gift can still be doubled to honor James’ legacy and carry forward the work he championed.

Would you join us in helping open the doors of the James Farr Workshop? Together, we can make this vision a reality.

Letter from Beef: AKA Brett Fedderson, Summer Camp Director

What an absolutely incredible year of summer camp we had! I do hope you were able to experience summer camp this year at Hidden Acres in some small (or large!) way, but if you weren’t, let me tell you about it:

This past camp season, Summer 2022, was my first year in the director’s seat (scary, I know!), and I had HUGE shoes to fill coming in after Amanda Smith and Tim Carpenter, my two predecessors. I wasn’t the only staff member taking on a new role at camp either! Over sixty percent of our summer staff was completely new to Hidden Acres and only one member of our CORE team had been on the CORE staff before. Being a new camp director and having such a new summer staff, naturally, my nerves were running pretty high going into the summer. I saw our newness and inexperience as a disadvantage and obstacle to overcome, but it forced us to fully hand the summer to God and trust that He would provide; looking back, I see that our newness is probably the best thing that could have happened to us this summer.

We experienced a summer of life change and joy at Hidden Acres. Our staff, most being fresh to both Hidden Acres and camp ministry, showed up each week of camp with hearts on fire for Jesus and immense passion to serve others. The Lord moved in big ways through them and the Gospel was shared with over 650 people this summer! During this camp season, we witnessed over thirty campers surrender their lives to Christ, multiple baptisms between campers and staff, and a constant stream of conversations about Jesus – and that doesn’t include the countless rededications and heart changes that we didn’t see! In any other summer, we might have been able to credit these successes to experienced leadership, veteran staffers, or a smooth program, but our newness and lack of these luxuries forced us to a monumentally important and simple realization: God showed up. We can’t explain the success at Hidden Acres this summer with any other fact except God showed up in undeniable, inexplicable, monumental ways.

Looking back, we are filled with inexpressible gratitude and joy for the souls that Jesus won. Looking forward, we ask you to join us in hopeful expectation and prayer that He will do it again. If you are interested in contributing but are unsure how, please reach out. I would love to speak with you about ways you can join us in our mission. As always, thank you for your support and friendship to Hidden Acres. May you be encouraged by the work the Lord has done and will do.

Testimony

Brett, Tim, and the Hidden Acres Staff! This week has been AMAZING! What a joy it was to partner with your ministry and share the gospel with students. I have been around many ministries, but there is something so unique about y’all. You guys are full of humility and are kingdom minded. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to bring our students and leaders here to learn, serve, and be a part of gospel-centered work.

Payton Esparza

Citizens Church

From Carp's Desk

The summer of 2021 was the first year that we partnered with Angel Tree™. Through Prison Fellowship Angel Tree, churches help support the families of prisoners year-round through delivering Christmas gifts on behalf of incarcerated parents, sending kids to summer camp, facilitating one-day sports camps, and more.

This year, Hidden Acres hosted over twenty campers through the Angel Tree program.

Two of the children included in this group were a set of siblings, Kassie and Timothy. They came to us through this program; hesitant, and unsure of what to expect, but in less than one week, they were impacted in a tremendous way. Kassie started off very reserved and hesitant to connect. We may have thought she was not impacted, but by the time she left she was in tears because she did not want to leave. They begged their grandparents to come back. Kassie and Timothy came to a total of three camps, including a day camp where the grandparents paid to stay at a hotel so they would not miss out on what they deemed a life-changing experience for their grandchildren.

Prison Fellowship invests on these type of camps because they want to break the generational cycle of incarceration. We believe that the message of the gospel can do just that.

We Have a New Mailing Address

We Have a New Mailing Address:

Hidden Acres Inc.

PO Box 901

Kaufman, TX 75142-0901

Summer Camp 2020 Outreach

Dear Friends,

We as a camp are facing unprecedented times.  Our leadership team at Hidden Acres has made the very difficult decision to cancel our 2020 summer camp season.  However, Hidden Acres is still planning on making an impact this summer.  

Here’s how:

We plan on serving from camp headquarters with our summer camp leadership team to develop and implement creative ways to stay connected with Hidden Acres campers and staff (i.e., letters, phone calls, fun camp videos, live-streams, zoom get-togethers etc.).  With summer camp in mind we also desire to work on some home improvement projects to make our programing better when campers return.

This plan will also allow us to continue developing our leaders for the future.  

We need your help:

In order to make our Summer Camp outreach possible we need funding for food, utilities, supplies for outreach projects, and for summer staff salary.  Since we will not have any revenue coming in, we are asking our friends and supporters to help us meet these needs through this season.  

Our goal is to raise $10,000.  We are in a time crunch.  We would like to raise the money by June 15, which is the day our summer camp outreach 2020 will begin. 

If you’re in a place where you could help us achieve this goal, would you please contribute to our needs. 

You can give online by clicking button below or by check (please make checks payable to Hidden Acres with summer 2020 in memo) and mail to: Hidden Acres, P.O. Box 851462 , Mesquite, TX 75185-1462 

To Be Present with the Lord

It is with bittersweet emotion that I share that Hidden Acres’ founder, Charles Diffee passed away December 15, 2019.  He was such a key element to the foundation and direction of HA and the effects of his efforts can be seen through all the buildings he designed and built as well as through the numerous individuals he mentored.   We will forever be indebted to this great man who saw the vision to create a place for countless lives to be impacted for all of eternity.  His legacy lives on and it was a legacy worth leaving.

I can’t thank Uncle Charles enough for all the love, support, guidance, patience, encouragement, wisdom, and enumerable ways he has cared for me. There are not enough words to explain the impact he has had in my life and to those in my family.

An excerpt from his Obituary reads, “Rev. Diffee’s lifelong focus was on serving young people, and to that end he founded Metropolitan Christian School in 1966 and Hidden Acres Retreat Center in Kaufman County in 1984. He often remarked that today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders and wanted to make sure they had solid Christian foundations.”

It is by his guidance and wisdom that we continue to focus our efforts in equipping leaders through our programming at Hidden Acres.  We thank you for your prayers for his family and friends as they grieve his passing.  Pray that we continue to point to Christ in all we do at Hidden Acres. - Tim Carpenter

Leo Lodge Makeover- Stage 1

We are so excited for the changes happening at the Leo Lodge.  Through the help of a generous donor we are starting part one of our Leo Lodge makeover.

Our Facilities Committee and Board are together talking through and planning upgrades for the first building built at Hidden Acres.  This building serves as the center of action at Hidden Acres as it holds our kitchen, dining hall, and a set of bunk rooms.  At this first stage, we are redoing our deck all around the building. Through continued volunteer help and funding our goals are to: cover the new porch area, put irrigation and landscape around the porch, paint the exterior, paint and redo flooring in the interior, replace windows and doors, and other changes to improve the efficiency  of this building.

If you would like to contribute to this project please click button below.

Friendsgiving

Dear friends, 

I hope all is well with you this Christmas season.  I wanted to take a brief moment to inform you of what is going on at Hidden Acres Camp and to see if you’d like to be part of our future.  For the rest of this year, our Hidden Acres Summer Camp Staff and Alumni is running a fundraiser to help benefit our camp in three ways…

• One, upgrading our programming activities

• Two, updating and repairing our older buildings

• Three, creating and stocking an official camp store

We are grateful for many improvements that have happened at Hidden Acres for the last three years. At the end of last summer we finished a new cabin that can now host 36 new campers and recently we had a grand opening for a new Welcome Center.  These two buildings have greatly improved our ministry and are of great blessing.  Now with these two projects under our belts we feel compelled to turn our attention to our older facilities that are used day in and out throughout our summer camps.  The two buildings that need updating are the Leo Lodge (which serves as lodging and dining spaces for our camp), and the Camp Conference Center (which we use for registration, various camp activities, and where we hope to add the camp store).

For the last 16 years of camp we have added a few small camper focus activities funded through grants and donations.  This year we are asking our friends to help us upgrade our camper activities.  We have created an online version of an envelope fundraiser on our site.  We are excited about the improvement possibilities that can happen if all the e-envelopes get filled.  Together we could raise $61,425 and make a lot of improvements.  You could help us make our camp experience more impactful and memorable.  Our staff is very excited about the changes this money could make for our camp. On the right you will see some of the things we hope to add and below you can see how you can be a part of our Friendsgiving Fundraiser.

We hope you will be our friend and give as much as you can to help us reach our goal. Click here to learn more information of how this fundraiser works.

Welcome Center Dedication

On November 10, 2019, two very deserving people were honored at Hidden Acres.  Charles and Lavina Diffee have given many years to the development of this great camp.  Charles’ vision (along with the encouragement from close friends) was the beginning of a foundation that has lasted for 35 years.  As Hidden Acres continues to grow, we are greatly indebted to these two individuals for pointing us in the right direction, for leaving this camp in great financial shape, for helping add the proper facilities and keeping our books up to date and organized.  

One of the more touching moments of the evening was showing an edited version of the many testimonies that people sent in by video.  To see the impact Charles and Lavina had on so many lives brought tears of joy to those attending. From peers to family members, to church members to campers, to camp staff, to former DTS (Dallas Theological Seminary) students; Charles and Lavina were mentors and great examples of what true servant leaders should be about.  These two great individuals sacrificed countless hours, personal resources (financial and otherwise), sweat and tears. To cap off the evening, a replica of a bronze plaque was revealed dedicating this new Welcome Center to these two great people. This plaque was provided by Charles’ and Lavina’s good friend Charles Hutchins.  

As we celebrated the long history that Charles and Lavina have with Hidden Acres, I’m reminded of our Mission Statement: “Hidden Acres is a place set apart to experience Christ, expand Community, and equip Leaders.”  These two encompassed every one of these aspects of our mission. They kept Christ the number one focus, they created a beautiful place for people to fellowship and grow together, and they provided opportunities for individuals to grow as leaders.  Thank you Charles and Lavina Diffee.