High School Winter Retreat

This year we had a full compliment at the cabin for the winter retreat. We had ten students, Brad and I and another couple that works with the youth regularly, Dan and Marian. It was so fun to be able to spend the weekend together. A visit to the cabin isn't always a "walk in the park", especially in the winter, but it's always an adventure and refreshing. This year there was so much snow that we had to park two miles away from the cabin, load up our gear in back packs and on sleds, and snowshoe up to the cabin. Brad had come up a week earlier with his dad, so the trail was already packed down a little bit which helped a lot. Once or twice I turned to look behind me and stepped off the trail a little bit. Instead of sinking only a couple inches into the snow, I was suddenly a foot or more deep in snow, even with snowshoes on!

It took us about 2 hours to get the whole gang up to the cabin. Once we arrived there was not a minute to spare - we had to open up the cabin, get dinner going, get a fire going, clear a path to the outhouse, clear off the deck, melt snow for water and unload the gear. Everybody pitched in in some way or another and it was truly awesome to see all the students working together and being cheerful about it!


We spent a lot of the weekend having fun - playing a variety of games, sledding, hiking, cooking, cleaning, and laughing. There was a little bit of harmonica playing in there, too. Don't ask. The focus for the weekend was Spiritual Gifts so we learned about what our individual gifts are and how they can be used to benefit the body of Christ. It was really interesting to learn who had what gifts! We really encouraged the students to use their gifts in our church somehow.

It was a great weekend. I was so impressed with our students - how they interacted with each other, how willing they were to serve each other and do the jobs that need to be done like collecting snow, stoking the fire, washing dishes, etc. They're awesome!
Here's a link to some pictures on Facebook.