Whisper Retreat

First off I want to thank everyone who prayed for the retreat this past weekend. God was definitely working through the weekend and I know it is because of all the prayer that went into it. Whisper was amazing. For those of you who don't know where the idea for the name of the retreat came from its from 1 Kings 19 where God doesn't appear to Elijah in the wind that shook the mountains, the earthquake, or the fire, but in a whisper. Our prayer was that each student who came on this retreat would experience God, that they would be intimate with God.

During the retreat I shared about my experience from Caleb and a lot of the things that we did were ideas from Caleb. My favorite part of the weekend was not the time that we spent together as a group, which was awesome anyways, but the time that we each spent alone with God. It was so cool coming together after our first quiet time alone with God and to hear that many students thought that the time was too short. Also, it was so neat to hear students share about what they read and what it taught them. We started off the weekend by taking away all their watches, cell phones and ipods. The point behind this was that we wanted all the distractions that we have at home to be put away, so that we are even more able to listen to what God has to say. Honestly, I had some of the best quiet times I have had in a long time while I was up at Negishi, the place where the retreat was. It brought back a lot of memories from Caleb, which made me sad, but at the same time all the more excited for where I am now.


We spent a lot of time alone with God, but we also spent a lot of time fellowship together. There are two duplexes that were our retreat houses. It worked out that we had one common house where we cooked all the food, played all of the games, and had all of our meetings. It was just so fun to play board games together, play outside with the soccer ball and football, and just to sit around and laugh together. I feel like each student who came up for the weekend came away with something new that God is teaching them, but also a group of friends who were a lot closer. The weekend had its struggles and obstacles, but I really feel, hope, and pray that God would use this to weekend to change our youth group. A lot of the kids are only freshman and sophomores so there is a good sign ahead for a lot of spiritual leadership. Continue to pray for the students and that they would continue to seek and grow in Christ.