Wilds Retreat 06

Me, Joanna, Mandy, and Erin

This last weekend, my church went to The Wilds in North Carolina for our bi-annual adult retreat. The highlight of my weekend was just being able spend time with some girls who I have been wanting to build a deeper friendship and bond with. The picture above is the four of us on the swing by the lake. We hung out all weekend and had the grandest time. We didn't hang out together to be a click or to the exclusion of anyone else. We did spend time with other people. But God worked to fulfill what I was hoping would happen. We were all able to bond with each other and some other people in the church more than we would have been able to only seeing each other a couple times a week and chatting after church. In their own way, each one has needed to have an opportunity to bond with some other girls in the church. Each of them is fairly new to the church. This was their first time of being able to spend an extended period of time with other girls their age.


Mandy and Erin had never been to The Wilds so this was their first time on "The Giant Swing." Erin was so confused and even more anxious about riding the swing with me when she realize it wasn't really just a big swing. She seemed to think it was a kind of rope swing or something. I think she still enjoyed it even though she scream like crazy the whole time.



Here are the "newlyweds." I kept calling them that because they had their newborn son, Ian, with them. But alas, their other 5 children were at home with Libby's parents. Including this retreat, this is the third time in a row that they have had a newborn with them during our church retreat.




We had an awesome time around God's Word as Dr. Mazak preached on the theme of "Humility" all weekend. I always need that. It was so nice to relax and spend time with other believers while being free to enjoy extra time together having fun and around God's Word.
At night, we would sit around and play games. We girls even made up games to amuse ourselves. That was all kinds of fun. On Saturday night, the other two retreats ended that were going on at the same time ours was on Friday and Saturday. Ours continued on into Sunday morning. That meant that we had the camp site to ourselves. One of the games that we girls decided to play that night was "Sardines." We used the upstairs and downstairs of the Lodge. It was so much fun. The weather was beautiful all weekend. God just blessed us with an amazing time. I am praying that God will use this weekend as a springboard to deepen relationships in our church in the near future. May He use iron to sharpen iron as we grow together in our walk with God for His glory.