"Fall" retreat

Teammates Ali and Lilly with Daniela, the
daughter of one of the students involved

The past week has been super hectic.  We had our fall retreat this past weekend.  It snuck up on me.  I was skyping with my parents on Wednesday and my Mom mentioned something about getting excited to go to retreat on Thursday.  What?!?!  Whoa.  Slow down.  I haven't even thought about that.  Yeah, that's how well I was doing with keeping up with the fact that retreat was days away.

Students registering at retreat

With multiple meetings, days on campus, celebrating birthdays and preparing for our fall retreat, we were looking forward to seeing what God did this past weekend.  We left Thursday evening and came back on Sunday late in the afternoon.  It was a really great time with staff and students.

The chaos before the meeting

The theme of the retreat was LVII (or 57 words).  Bart spoke on the Lord's Prayer throughout the weekend.  We had a lot of fun seeing students engage with each other, do a talent show and love on the kids.  It was our 2nd time at the conference place and they had a pool so the kids and I spent a lot of time swimming.  They had a couple of water slides so the kids enjoyed the smaller one when it was working (and even when it wasn't).

The kids helped us make a video
advertising for a conference in April

So now we are just trying to recover from the planning.  We're pretty tired.  It was a great weekend but we didn't sleep well and stayed up later than we would've liked a couple of nights.  All in all, we feel like the weekend was a success with at least 36 students attending.

Yeah drums!

This week will be relatively normal.  Since our weekly meeting is in the middle of the day on Thursday, we won't celebrate Thanksgiving until Friday.  I think the team is looking forward to the day off and a fun time of food and fellowship.  We're hoping a turkey will be served up, but you never know what you will and won't be able to find here!

I was playing with the settings on the camera my parents
bought us....until it died (and I was smart enough to bring
the wrong camera cord!)