That being said, after a super fast day and lots of caffeine, I picked up Madison around 5:15 and we left for the retreat. The keyboard, all giant and awkward, was shoved in my trunk and back seat with our stuff piled on top. I’m honestly shocked it fit. The rain had been falling on and off all day, choosing my departure time to stay around and open the flood gates. I am not a fan of driving in torrential downpours at night. Especially when I’m driving to a new place and it involves highways with construction and semi trucks that drive 75 mph, splashing my windshield and sending panic into my fingers. I held a tight grip on the wheel the whole drive, praying that the drivers I was sharing the road with were sober, alert, and aware of the little white car with some precious cargo. That keyboard is not cheap ;)
After crossing the toll bridge, a creepy guy on Highway 141 in a green plastic rain outfit walking in the dark, the Zoller’s, and a ton of streets with six different names, we arrived at Camp Jonah. It was only raining a little, but the ground was muddy and sticky. I seriously brought the wrong shoes. My poor white converse didn’t stand a chance. I rolled up me jeans so at least those would stay clean, and walked into the building trying to find staff people. Getting the keyboard inside was quite a chore; Madison and I had to carry it through the mud so it wouldn’t get dirty. After driving for hours it was quite a difficult task, and also a pretty humorous one for anyone watching us. Thankfully, Madison and I got everything set up and started rehearsing will the help of Aaron, one of the staff guys at Jonah.
All of our sessions had short activities in the beginning. Our goal was to get all the girls here to understand community, finding out new things about each other, and learning how to communicate with people in their small group and the group at large. The first one we had in store was a matching game. Becky handed out random slips of paper that had a single word on it, each one with a match somewhere else in the room. The girls were then instructed to find their match (Candy + Cane etc), meet and introduce themselves if their match was a person they didn’t know, and then hold on to their little cards. It was awesome seeing how many new friends were made just by a ten minute activity.
Worship with Madison was simple, but rad. With only one instrument and the songs in ‘girl’ keys, I was overpowered by the voices in front of me, and couldn’t stop smiling listening to the girls singing as one voice. It was a beautiful choir of young ladies praising their Savior, and it was awesome. Judith followed with an introduction to our study for the weekend complete with a first grade art project. We were given a hand drawn diagram of the tongue to help us begin to think about the tongue and our words.
With the first session complete, free time commenced. I was exhausted already and seriously considered going straight to bed. I was sleeping alone in this dorm room with rows of bunk beds, and the idea of solitude was extremely appealing. I managed to hold out for a little while, laughing at Katie’s girls in their adorable footie pajamas and watching my old small group girls swinging on a rope swing in the gym. Sleep eventually overtook me, and I climbed into my sleeping bag ready to dream.
Sadly, sleep was harder to come by than I expected. Oh, how early 7:30am came.
There was a short leader meeting before breakfast in the kitchen, where I was happy to see coffee waiting. There wasn’t much to communicate, so we had the meeting and went to find the girls. Long before the retreat, the leaders had decided to implement two rules for the morning of breakfast. First, they had to come in their pajamas with NO makeup on. Anyone who tried to walk through the doors to the kitchen with regular clothes and makeup on would be asked to return to their room and chill out. Second, they were to meet up with their match from the first night’s game and sit with them during breakfast. It was a chance to get the girls loosened up and more comfortable with the other girls there.
For the morning session, our activity allowed the girls to get to know the other female leaders in the youth group, by having an old fashioned Q&A time. Each small group spread out in the chapel and the leaders would spend about three minutes with each group answering questions the girls could come up with. Once the three minutes was up, the leaders would rotate and to a new small group, and the bonding continued. It was adorable watching the leaders get embarrassed when personal questions had obviously been asked, and most of the small groups came up with great questions.
Judith spoke on issues dealing with the heart for our teaching time. She exposed some of the deep underlying evils that plague our hearts and cause the words and thoughts that girls so easily struggle with. Guilt, unforgiveness and pride all contribute to the mess that lies inside, and understanding God’s view on these things can begin the process of melting away the bad and bringing in the love and forgiveness He has to offer.
Continuing with the goal of learning more about the other girls in the youth group, we came up with three different afternoon activities that included three different groups of girls. First were the individual small groups, girls they already knew at least a little. Then, we combined a few of them into two groups so they would meet and be surrounded by potentially new girls and be challenged to communicate with possible strangers. Finally, we had one large group game that encouraged everyone to be aware of everyone else. This part of the day was extremely fun for me! I became the game MC/DJ and loved watching everything unfold in front of me. Here’s a breakdown of the games:
Magic Carpet: Each group had a beach towel on the ground that they were all standing on and were told it was their magic carpet, high up in the sky. Only problem was, the carpet couldn’t fly because it was upside down! The challenge was to flip the carpet right side up, keeping every person on the towel. They were up in the sky after all. Only one group came even remotely close to figuring out how to flip it, let alone executing it. Groups stood there staring at their towel, hoping that the solution would magically come to them. A few leaders became frustrated wondering how on earth it was possible, to which I reminded them that it was just a game :)
Ball O’ Fun: This one was my idea. Two groups, two balls of yarn each. The person holding the end of the yarn held their piece and threw the rest of the yarn to another person, who would then wrap the yarn around them somewhere (wrist, ankle etc), then continue throwing until each person had some part of the yarn connected to them. Each group did this with two colors, intertwining and criss-crossing yarn in all sorts of crazy patterns. My favorite was Miranda, who wrapped the yarn around her ponytail! After they did this, the challenge was announced. The person holding the remaining ball of yarn had to now reroll the yarn! Following the yarn exactly as it was and replacing the people holding onto it was hysterical. I ran and slid underneath the web of string and took pictures of girls bending in crazy positions to follow the yarn and roll it all back up.
Do You Love Your Neighbor: This might be my most favorite group game of all time. I was first introduced to it in middle school. The whole group sits in a giant circle in chairs, one less chair than the number of people. The person who doesn’t have a chair, also known as the “it” person, walks up to a random person in the circle and asks the question “Do you love your neighbor?” The individual who was asked this question now has two options. They either love their neighbor, or they don’t! Now this isn’t some twisted game that separates people. It’s meant to expose facts and create humor. If a person DOES love their neighbors, the two people sitting on either side much switch seats, all the while the person who is “it” is trying to snag one of their chairs. The person left without a chair is now “it”. If that person does NOT love their neighbor, the “it” person then asks “then who do you love?” This gives them a unique opportunity, as they can answer with a number of options. We encouraged the girls to say things like “I love freshman” or “ I love girls who have contacts”, things that would help them learn new things about each other. In the case of the “I love freshmen” comment, all the freshmen would have to jump up and find a new seat somewhere else in the circle while the person who is “it” again tries to take someone else’s seat. Last person standing became it. These girls were vicious! I’m honestly surprised that no chairs or bones broke during the game.
When the madness was done, there was one final activity that we had in store. This particular one came out of a desire to teach our girls how speak kindly to each other and learn how to receive compliments well. Girls are so prone to negative words to each other and backstabbing, and we wanted to give them a chance to practice saying the opposite, aka nice words. Each girl was given a sheet of paper with their name printed on the top and string attached on the top. Wearing them on their back, they were given markers, and in musical chair style, wrote a kind word on another girls paper. When the music stopped, they switched to a new person, and so on. Each girl had the chance to write something kind about every other girl, whether they knew them well or not. Sometimes they even had too much to say and would end up spending two or three rotations on someone. The cards were then collected and given to their small group leader to be read later on.
Our session that night dealt with the good treasure in heart, giving and receiving compliments, and how to be good listeners. The girls learned practical ways to show they care about each other through body language, saying thank you to compliments, and learning the differences between different types of compliments. They even practiced all of these things to each other a few different times just to prove that it can be done. I was so impressed with how seriously the girls did this. Obviously with no boys being there they weren’t distracted and didn’t feel embarrassed. During their small group afterwards, they read their comment cards and talked within the group about what they read. We met back together as a group and a few of them shared the impact reading the kind words had on them, and even what surprised them about what was written. Often times we get so comfortable with who we think we are that we don’t realize how other people view us, and seeing it written down can be a huge encouragement.
Then came the pinnacle of retreat games: THE NIGHT GAME! Since winter is fast approaching and with the surrounding area kind of desolate, we kept the game indoors with all the lights off. The challenge: an Alpha Scavenger Hunt. Each group was told to search the campus (excluding personal staff areas) for items that began with each letter of the alphabet (apple for ‘A’, banana for ‘B’ etc). The item would not count if the first letter was an adjective or a specific kind of item, like volleyball or basketball, where each would count as a ‘B’ for ball. To make things a little more tricky, not only were all the lights in the building off, but the groups were only allowed in their rooms for thirty seconds by turning in a room pass. The lights in just their dorm room were flipped on for thirty seconds and one girl was allowed to grab items from their own belongings, and then not allowed back in for five minutes. Only one casualty other than rug burns from girls sliding on the carpet in haste to get to their bags...me. I got owned by this radiator type heater that was laying on the ground at the beginning of the hallway. The lights had just been switched off and as I walked out of the chapel to my post, I crashed onto the heater and rolled further onto the floor. Jeralee told me that the shape of the bruise looked like Wolverine attacked my leg, so I adopted that story at first. Sounds better than falling on a heater... It took two Band-Aids, hydrogen peroxide and some Tylenol to get me working again, as the wolverine shaped bruise began to form on the entire left side of my calf. In fact, it’s been a few weeks since the retreat, and I still have the gash marks and bruise. Regardless, my former small group girls and their awesome new leader Cindi were the first to provide 26 different items that began with each letter of the alphabet, including an X-Ray app on her iPhone and won the game! I was quite proud. :)
Sleep came much easier that night after a full day of singing, announcing and playing, and in the morning I woke up to a few inches of snow on the ground outside! Although I was slightly worried my car might get stuck, I enjoyed the sight and calm that comes with snow as the girls woke up and the excitement started. There were no restrictions on attire for breakfast, and most of the girls were too busy looking outside to really care about much else.
The keyboard decided to freak out that morning, so instead of the whole set, Judith spoke and then I led the girls in an acapella rendition of High and Lifted Up. It was still so amazing to hear all the girls singing together and lifting their voices so loud. It’s something I rarely hear, as most songs are done in higher keys and are not comfortable for girls to sing out. Heavy snow in another part of the town had caused a huge power outage, so packing everything up was a little difficult. Plus, dragging a huge keyboard out to my car in the snow was a humorous experience. The snow on the roads had melted enough for us to safely drive home, and with Madison and I slightly short on sleep we spent the whole drive laughing at random words and thoughts.
Looking back on the weekend, I’m amazed and thankful for how smoothly it went. There wasn’t any drama, at least that I heard of, and I never felt rushed or overwhelmed. It’s possible that not having a small group contributed to the ease of the weekend, but I never really heard anyone else complaining about lack of time or any issues. I would love to hear from each of the leaders and even some of the girls, just to know how the small group times were and what they thought of spending time meeting new girls and learning about each other. Community is a huge topic right now in many churches, and we definitely tried to help foster that during the retreat. I appreciated a new side of things, taking on the administrative role and even being solely responsible for the music. I am so thankful for Madison playing, as I felt completely inadequate with my guitar and piano skills. Needless to say, even though I didn’t feel prepared, God took care of the weekend and the details as He always does, and provided a great start to the small group year and a chance for me to connect with girls in a whole new way. Best of all, I survived an entire weekend with all females! Wasn’t sure I could do it... :)
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