Sr High Retreat

Hey All

Well it has been a long weekend. It started out with me lacking sleep and already not being in the best health with a bad cold too. But that didn't stop the weekend from going on. I was a cabin leader for 5 guys this weekend in the Skyridge Lodge. It was a good weekend full of activities and a good speaker. The one thing though is the weekend was just soo cram packed with stuff there was no time to really just sit and get to know the guys I had in my cabin group. Even when the activities were going on the kids wouldn't play much just because all they wanted was to chill and hang out.
My group of guys were a group of two friends and three friends, and all local to the island. I actually knew a few most of them through associations with other people. That actually helped a lot with getting to know these guys a bit better.
Over the period of the weekend I realized these guys mostly wanted to just hang out and do their own thing rather than have a cabin leader follow them around, so I let them free. Let them know what was expected and whatnot and most of the time I just hung around and met up with them for events.
Over the period of the week I did definately notice a change in my guys though. Most of them came into this weekend with a somewhat hard heart toward Christianity through previous experiences. But in just being there for them and not pushing things on them, I could see the walls they had were slowly showing holes. Actually after the retreat was over, one of my guys came out the the youth worship night that I help lead at Cobble Hill. It was really encouraging to see him there and get to talk to him more on a one on one basis. I really hope he comes some more.

Over all the weekend was quite good, if you can get over a theft incident where a bunch of stuff got stolen and the lack of sleep. But really when you think of it the weekend was pretty good. God was working in these kids this weekend and I pray and hope it was the start to something big for these guys.

God Bless
Aaron