Morning's Light

Spent this weekend at a retreat for the youth and adult leadership of matchbox ministries – a youth ministry. I’ll let the photos tell the story….

But imagine with me for a moment… you are sitting in the beautiful dining room of a conference center/campground, gazing out at the snow covered ice on the lake.  You’re munching on a salad or enjoying a bit of ice cream in the cutest little dessert bowls, when you notice something strange.  A parking lot below the dining room is suddenly a flurry of activity.  You peer closer to get a better glimpse…being careful not to let your pretty blue jello cubes slide off the table in your earnestness to see what’s happening outside.

What? A blonde in a blue car has been quickly surrounded on all sides by an official looking SUV with tinted windows and three other vehicles…blocking her car in.  WHAT IS THIS?  A bust? is it the SWAT Team on a covert operation? You crane your neck, trying to figure out what this excitement is before you reluctantly finish dinner and leave for the evening session of the conference you drove four hours to attend.  You gather your things, wondering what happened…. and miss the cheer that goes up when a group of 8 guys has successfully gotten the hood of the blonde’s car open so that the battery can be charged.  (the doohickey that one would pull to pop the hood open broke completely off…..so getting the hood of the car open was quite the challenge.)  And you certainly can’t see the two vans that slid into ditches 20 minutes into their return drive home.  Or the big tractor that a farmer used to pull the 15-passenger van out of the ditch. 

Now here’s a glimpse into the weekend’s retreat where we all bonded, prayed for each other, spoke words of encouragement to each other, had a ton of fun, heard some teaching from Bryan and sang together.  I can’t wait for next year’s retreat!

awww….courtney + krysta!

(krysta + megan + lorrie + courtney + sam + monica + hannah)

this must have been around 1 AM.

Annie + Robert who is pretty in pink. AND holding my lovely orange purse.

Annie + Monica

(I took this photo of the two good friends Joe and Joey  + I wanted to get the little guy on Joey’s tshirt – it’s a member of the Jack Black band Tenacious D.  The little guy looking out cracks me up.)

Youth Guy – Bryan

chris + friends

alex + bobby

And a great time was had by all!!  G’night.