Tween Retreat & Weekend Recap

Last weekend I went on my second retreat with our 4th and 5th graders. It was a great trip, and I'm glad its only one night.. because they tire me out! This retreat is a packed, high-energy 24hr trip. We left the church after school got out on Friday and got back Saturday just in time for dinner. The next day at church, quite a few of the students told me they had gone straight to bed when they got home. My thought about that? Mission accomplished! =)

So, we got to camp Friday night, had a meeting, a snack, then had chapel. There were a few different retreats going on at the same time, so we got the honor of being in the cabins way up the hill and far away (sarcasm and exaggeration added for effect). It didn't phase our students, but I'm pretty sure I got a good work out walking up and down that hill as many times as we did. Anyway, after chapel we could pretty much do what we wanted, and our girls opted to stay in cabin and wait to go tubing until the next day. So we sat around in the cabin talking, playing truth or dare, and eating candy. Yes, eating candy. It seemed like each girl in our cabin had been sent with four boxes of candy and told to share, because they never ran out and had ample to spare! During truth or dare, somehow the idea of everyone running a lap around the cabin, barefoot, outside (in the SNOW!) came about. Yes, I did that too. There's a first for everything, and I hope that is the only time I do that. It hurt like crazy, but it is definitely a memory for all of us.

The next day brought an early breakfast and games out on the snowhill. There was a snowball toss, speed trials on the tubing hill, and a snow sculpture competition, all of which were fun. There was more candy, more chapel, and a cool new song that we learned ("Everybody Get Walking"). There was freetime in the afternoon which consisted of our kids playing in the game room, cross country skiing, and play ga-ga ball (octaball).

The speaker was familiar to camp, but this is the first time I had ever heard him. He did a great job, and gave the kids a lot to chew on. He talked about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (or, To-bed-we-go, as he said it). He focused on how they stayed faithful in the small things, stood up and stood out, and weren't ashamed to love God. It was very neat to see our students respond to him. He is also the first speaker I've heard to tell students to doodle during the lesson. It worked great though.. one of our students showed me his handouts on the way home, and he had doodled the lessons while the speaker talked. It was very neat to see how he had viewed the story, and will probably be memorable for him too. Instead of having simple written notes, he has a picture book to remember the chapel services by, and it gives his parents a chance to ask him to explain his doodles. Success.

Then came church Sunday morning. We had an energetic set of songs to lead the congregation in on praise team, and pastor spoke about finishing well in life. He gave examples of people who had started well/poorly, yet their lives ended poorly/well, and then he gave examples of those who started and ended well. It was a very good service. Then, Sunday night he spoke at youth group out of the book of Ecclesiastes on how "Things Don't Satisfy." He told about Solomon and how he had everything he could ever want, but he was empty and never satisfied by life. The object lesson was how "things" in this life don't satisfy, only God does, and we need to focus on Him, and not mere "things."

Overall, it was a great weekend, but left me exhausted. Let's just say that caffeine is a wonderful thing =)

Harvest Party Was A Success!

Every year our church puts on an annual harvest party. Some years, it has been on halloween night, others it hasn't. This year it was. I'm not sure how and why it was started, but it is definitely a great alternative if you live in a community where you don't want your kids out on halloween night. It lasts for two hours, and is filled with games, candy, cider, donuts, and this year there was a cardboard maze and bounce house. It's also one of the largest outreach events our church puts on.

All in all it went great. There weren't any issues that came up, no one got hurt, and everything went smoothly. Quite a few of our youth groupers stepped up and ran the games in addition to setting them up before. I was very impressed at how many of them would volunteer their time at something like this while they could be out with their friends on halloween night. It definitely showed us some initiative and their desire to serve, which is very cool.

I didn't get many pictures because my camera battery died, but here are a few:

My sister and two of our cousins made this Sunday at youth group

Caleb was a carhartt model (he changed into clean clothes basically, because he got out of work just in time to make it there) and I was a make shift cowgirl 

Shenanigans.

Due to my lack of a scanner, this is a picture of a picture we had taken:

My sister, me, and Caleb

("A mess," "a cowgirl," and "a carhartt model")