Monday, August 21, 2023

My Week at Joni and Friends Family Retreat 2023: Days 3 and 4

Part two of my week at retreat is of Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday, the STMs had morning devotions and prayers, then it was time for breakfast. I am not a fan of these early mornings (We have our devotionals at 7:40 am), but for camp, I am willing to put up with it for a few days!

After breakfast, me and the other sweet shop volunteers made a few more batches of brookies to sell. I am now known/famous for the brookies, as people kept coming up to me, saying that they really enjoyed them. I suppose that's a good thing!

That took about an hour or so, and we were able to have the rest of the morning off. I went to my room to rest, before lunch.

After lunch, me and the other sweet shop people were in the shop for the afternoon. There were supposed to be fun activities for the campers/families, but it ended up raining, so bingo was set up in the sweet shop for those who wanted to play, which made it quite a bit busier for us on a Tuesday, than usual. Which is a good thing.

We then had dinner, and then there was a square dance, as well as a petting zoo. For the first time ever, a race car driver brought his race car for us to check out. I'm not really into racing, but it was pretty cool to see the car.

I was going to sit out on the square dance and just watch, but a couple people convinced me to join in. Which, to be honest, I am kind of glad they did. I am a very shy person, so I don't always join in on things on my own.

There was a horse-drawn carriage ride that evening, and when I got off, I got my picture taken with the horses. As I was standing next to the horse, I saw him move his head toward me, as if I was very interesting to him.

On Wednesday, we had the usual STM morning devotions and prayers, and then breakfast.

After breakfast, I was given the morning off, so I went and sat in on the morning programming. There was worship songs being sung, a couple games, and then everyone split up into groups based on their age.

Everyone was allowed to request a song to have sung, and I wanted to request Amazing Grace, as it was my mom's favorite song. I was too shy to speak up, but someone else had requested it, which made me very happy.

When everyone broke up into their groups, I went with the high schoolers, as the leader that was in charge of that group was/is one of my friends. 

For the first half of the class, she taught about lies that the devil may tell us, and how we can defend ourselves against those lies by putting on the armor of God.

She had a couple crafts, where everyone wrote lies on pieces of orange paper shaped like flames, that the devil would tell us, and glued them onto sticks, where they were then stuck into a shield. Then, they made arrows, that represented the truth of God, and a piece of paper with a Bible verse was tied onto the arrows.

I was able to make my own flames, and arrows, which was pretty cool.

We then had lunch, and afternoon activities. It was actually a nice day for the activities, which was nice. Then, the sweet shop people and I helped set up for the parents dinner, and I was able to relax afterwards, and eat dinner as usual in the dining hall.

After dinner, we had our usual dance (not a square dance, but one with pop and rock and roll songs), and then the STMs had our Wednesday evening debrief.

So, days 3 and 4 were great!!

No comments:

Post a Comment