Retreat Week

As you know, this past week was our summer staff retreat. After we said goodbye to our last group from Conroe, TX, we began a week of rest and rejuvenation. We were joined by Josh and Erin Shaffer, and their 3 children, Lane, Ty, and Aisha, as well as Jim Newberry, his wife Tina, and their 2 daughters, Mallory and Bailey. Jim is our spiritual mentor for the summer. He is the one who led our pre-Jamaica retreat as well. This week he served us through meetings and one on one discussions and evaluations of how our summer has been going. One thing that Jim has taught us is to adopt an attitude of intensity. He says that we should either be partaking in intense engagement or intense withdraw, modeled after Jesus himself. This summer is pretty much all intense engagement, so this past week was our intense withdraw. We were able to rest and relax, process a little bit of what we have been experiencing, and evaluate ourselves to kind of map out and plan the rest of our time here in Harmons. Each of us summer staffers spent a lot of time by ourselves, praying, journaling, reading, and just replenishing. We had a wonderful week! We returned to the Harmony House last night and are spending the next few days cleaning, getting the house ready, and finishing the apartment for our new missionary couple that moves in Monday! (More on this later...) Now we are exactly halfway done with the summer. And yes, this is a little hard to believe. Thank you for praying for our retreat!

Check back on Monday,

Lacy