If you are familiar with Messiah Texas, you know our adage: You’ve got friends at Messiah Texas! What you might not know is how those friends came to be in the first place.
It all started in 2015. Ty Porter, our board President, was the director at Messiah West Coast, another awesome youth camp in California. While that was going on, Brandon Darby was getting into Torah and had been rec directing for some Baptist camps he and Brian Serrano had been doing for years. Ty heard about this and so invited Brandon to come to be the recreation director at Messiah West Coast. Brandon agreed and then told Brian that there was a need for a senior boys counselor. So, Brian and Brandon went to California and experienced a Messianic youth camp, one of the few of its kind. It was such an amazing experience, they began talking about how badly they needed something like this in Texas.
Brad Scott, the speaker for that 2015 Messiah West Coast camp, told the three men that they should really do this in Texas. Brian told him that, yes, they had been discussing it but Brad said, no, you can do it this summer. They called him crazy. It was already summer and the idea of trying to do something like this on such short notice was daunting, but we serve a God of miracles and Brian, Ty, and Brandon said okay. Brian called Circle Six Ranch in Stanton, Texas, and the miracle of miracles, they had an opening for Labor Day weekend.
So, Messiah Texas hosted its first-ever youth summer camp. Around twenty kids turned out. It was a success. From there, Brian, Ty, and Brandon added their wives to the lead team, and the six of them led Messiah Texas until the formalization of the official non-profit and became the board we have now. Brian became the Executive Director, and Ty became the President.
Since its start in 2015, Messiah Texas has not only continued running its youth summer camp but has also added a youth winter camp, a pre-teen summer camp, a fall and spring young adult retreat, marriage conferences, and Texas Tabernacles–and boy, are we all excited to see what the Lord is going to do next.
