Gathering Around the Table

What 31 years in the YAA camp kitchen and dining hall have taught us about hospitality, community, and making room for one another.

This summer, Andrea Hawthorne attended a concert by The Arcadian Wild. The band opened with a song called “Welcome,” and its message resonated deeply with her. The song put words to something she had experienced throughout 31 years at Yellowstone Alliance Adventures: the joy of gathering people around a table.

Read Andrea's full reflection: Fall 2026 issue of Canyon Echoes.

For Andrea, the camp kitchen and dining hall have been much more than places to prepare and serve meals. They have been places to practice hospitality, build relationships, share rich conversations, and participate in the work of discipleship.

More Than a Meal

From meals that were resounding successes to others that taught her to laugh at herself, the camp kitchen and dining hall have been home for Andrea.

Few things have brought her greater joy than looking out across the dining hall and seeing campers and adults gathered around a table, enjoying good food and sharing in fellowship and community.

A meal can meet a physical need, but gathering around a table can offer something more: a place to belong, an opportunity to be known, and room for conversations that might not happen anywhere else.

At YAA, hospitality is often lived out in these ordinary moments. It looks like preparing a meal, welcoming people into a shared space, serving others, and creating opportunities for relationships to grow.

Setting the Table for Light and Hope

Andrea's reflection reaches beyond the meals themselves to consider what it means to make room for people in a world where loneliness and isolation are real struggles.

She describes the work of setting the table as a way of joining God in pushing back that darkness—helping create a place where people can find connection, light, and hope.

It's a beautiful picture of how everyday acts of service can become part of something much bigger. A meal may seem like a simple offering, but the care behind it can communicate welcome. A conversation can become an opportunity for encouragement. And a shared table can become a place where people experience the love of Christ through the people around them.

Gathering around the table, Andrea reminds us, is God's idea. She is grateful to have participated in that work through the meals she prepared and the people she served.

A Life of Loving and Serving

For Andrea, the YAA dining hall has been a place to live out Jesus' call to love God wholeheartedly and love and serve others deeply.

That calling has shaped more than her work. It has shaped a life she looks back on with joy and gratitude.

Her reflection is a reminder that meaningful ministry doesn't always happen on a stage or during a planned program. Sometimes, it happens behind the scenes—in the kitchen, across a table, through a meal prepared with care, or in the conversations that unfold when people make time to gather.

At YAA, we want to offer refreshing hospitality, create meaningful experiences, and build lasting connections. Andrea's story shows how those values can take shape in something as familiar as sharing a meal.

Because the table is about more than the food. It's about the people gathered around it, the relationships formed there, and the opportunity to love and serve others in the name of Jesus.

This story was adapted from Andrea Hawthorne's reflection in the Fall 2026 issue of Canyon Echoes, Yellowstone Alliance Adventures' publication.