Saturday //
For breakfast on Saturday, we had eggs, bacon, and freshly baked croissants. It was delicious! The food kept coming, so we kept eating. After breakfast, we had devotional time. The devotion was on Hosea 3, I was tempted to talk about what Pastor Scott talked about, but I did not. I think that was a definite quenching of the Spirit. So I resolved to talk more...(until people get bored of me.)
After devotional time, we had worship, small group time, followed by lunch time. My small group consisted of Howard, Philip, Andrew, and Vivian. Howard was our small group leader. It is safe to say that I hijacked a lot of the small group meetings. Because, I talk too much.
It is important to note that while walking towards a dining hall two blocks away (or what would be equivalent to two blocks -- it is a campsite.) with plenty of fresh snow on the ground, stuff will happen. Stuff of the snowball throwing variety. I am pleased to note that no one tried throwing any at me. Actually a correction, no one hit me. The current chair, Danielle tried a sneak attack from several feet away. I did not realize that I was under attack until the third or fourth snowball. :P
For lunch, we had salad, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Yes, there was ketchup. Yes, I put ketchup on my grilled cheese, it was awesome. There were also these really really good brownies.
Theresa led a group talk on prayer. There were games and illustrations to show how God speaks to us through prayer, how He hears us, and practical guidelines on prayer. Also, there was PRAYER. It was good. I think she was a little nervous, but I can understand... there are 30 people listening to you. Everyone would be nervous. ^_^ Following her talk, my 2nd workshop.
Workshop:
The audience for this workshop was a little more intimidating. Among the participants, Danielle, Allan, Alex, and some more. These are people well-versed in Scripture, all perfectly capable of making call outs, if I am Biblically inaccurate. I prayed that God will help me out earlier, so I delivered pretty confidently. It was good, the people liked it. Now, application. :P
Now thinking back, I should have probably stated some more definite things to do. Yes, I mentioned things to do, but I should have stressed the importance and listed out the practical things they can do to improve their spiritual life. It is okay. God will convict their hearts if anything.
After the workshop, there was free time. We played snow football. I was not as useful as past retreats. There were a couple tackles here and there, but the major plays went to other players. Tony was our all-star, making an interception and catches out of impossible scenarios. Angie was another all-star on the opposing team, making the longest reception in the game.
Dinner followed football. We had chicken, really good mashed potatoes, and veggies. The Salvation Army worker was building up this story of how the kids raising the chicken over the summer. The chicken tasted really good. I am pretty sure he was joking.
After dinner time, we had some more small group time, worship, girls vs. guys time and free time. At this point, I started hunting for people to talk to about stuff. It is included below in the talk-section.
Guy time was good. They talked about love, life, and Jesus. You can guess what they talked about. I am glad that people are honest and things, but Jesus needs to be the primary motivator in their lives. I hope that message stuck to their core.
Free time! A definite highlight of the free time was playing Risk 2210. There are some slight variations, the only major one you need to know is that there are water colonies, and that you must keep your base alive (you start off with two). The bases are randomly drawn, my team ended up on asia (fail) and south america...right next to another person's base. In fact, we were paired off with another team, our bases were right next to each other in asia and south america.
There were five teams total, consisting of two people a team. At about the midpoint in the game, lines had been drawn. Allan and Richard Chan's team had the largest army within North America. There one base existed in a territory within what was once USA. (All the names for places are different). Patrick controlled Africa. Danielle and Jacky controlled Europe and Australia. Philip and Brian Tse's team shared Asia and South America with Elijah and I. Philip's team and my team were definitely the weakest. Why do you ask?
There is a small water colony off the coast of China called Sung Tzu. Elijah and I decided that we should add it to our empire. Allan owned Sung Tzu. "WE DECLARE ATTACK ON SUNG TZU", I declared passionately! And after sending waves after waves of our army. Allan still occupied the little colony of Sung Tzu. Despite being heavily outnumbered, those poor farmers managed to fend off our invading army. We had to wait another turn..before we finally took it over...after losing some more men, despite it being a 6 on 1 dice battle.
I think that over the course of the game, Elijah and I roll a consistent average of 2.3. It was pretty sad.
Anyways, the most exciting part is yet to come! Allan thought it was prudent to invade Europe, because Danielle and Jacky were set to become the next superpower. So he lined up his troops along the edge and was preparing to attack. He ends his turn.
Philip's turn next. At once, Danielle and I started to convince him to attack Allan's weakly defended base! Granted, it was still a larger army then what Philip possessed. Philip went for it. Next, it can only be described as intervention of God...as Philip's small army managed to defeat Allan's defenders and destroy his only base. Allan was out!
Our turn came next, in which we ruthlessly killed Philip's remaining base. It was in the interest of ending our long game. We also fortified Sung Tzu. We just got it last turn, after all.
Danielle and Jacky were up next, it was decided they had to attack Patrick's base, because their bases were so close together. They both had one base each. We told them to take over various parts of Asia, so that they can build an army big enough to kill Patrick. (You get reinforcements each time you take a territory). Again, what happened can only be described as miraculous. Danielle and Jacky send their troops to take over Sung Tzu, and we started rolling high numbers to defend against their advance. This is despite, trying to LOSE.
Anyways, they took over some of our land, and overthrow Patrick's base. Now it was just Danielle's team and my team. For some reason, we had a path directly to their base! So we sent all the troops from our base, and managed to win! At this point, people started accusing me of being manipulative and unfairly taking advantage of different situations. That's preposterous.
Talks:
A couple of good talks, Saturday night. We had a discussion thing going on with Thaddeus, Anna, Alex, and some sitting in and out about random Christian stuff. It was pretty cool, I did not know that Thaddeus was so well versed in Bible stuff. So that was encouraging. We talked about spiritual gifts, random movements going on in Canada, Jesus as our high priest, infant baptism, dynamic faith, and more. Anna is always cool, because she wants to know more Jesus stuff.
Also spent some time talking to a girlfriend of mine. Just hearing the things that are going on in her life, as well as other stuff was good. I pray that she just continues to live for Christ and be good with all the difficulties that she is experiencing. Also, this answered some of my own questions about things I was praying about. It reminded me about how awesome God is in that he plans so much and his reasoning for telling me to do things is for my benefit! Oh, how I pray that I become more obedient and quick to it, too!
End of Part 2
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