It's true...retreat was pretty fantastic!

You know, the Lord is just so good. It is kind of hard to express how much He does and how perfectly He plans things. So we came over here, expecting to teach English at an English camp. The Lord however, had other things in mind. As I said earlier, only 8 people signed up and we needed 100 in order to break even. So clearly, that was just not enough...

So, Pastor Dton decided that we should do a staff/missionary retreat in it's place, in order to take a break and just hang out. So...this blog is going to be my attempt at telling you about camp with out it being like 27 pages long...we'll see how I actually do.

Let's start with me being scared out of my mind...how about that??? I was told the morning we were leaving for retreat that on the last day, I was going to have to talk about evangelizing to youth for an hour. What the heck? Seriously? I immediately started to FREAK OUT. For starters, I don't speak Thai and I totally started to disqualify myself. I was thinking what do I know about evangelism...

That was how my trip started. I scooped myself into the van and tried my very hardest not to burst into tears. So things were going through my mind and on top of it all, at that moment, I just really wanted to talk to my dad. I knew that he would have had something to say to calm me down and make me feel more confident. Just like he always did with teaching stuff. I just started to silently vent about the situation to the Lord, asking Him for peace and wisdom and words...cause I didn't have any ideas. The point of the workshop was for people to talk about how to minister to different groups of people to the Thai staff that is in charge of each ministry, which for me, made it even more stressful. I don't know why. It probably had a lot more to do with other stuff then with what was actually going on, but anyways...as I was talking it over with the Lord, I just felt such a peace and He slowly started to speak different things to me, different ideas and points that I could share. I am so thankful that I serve a God who is amazingly faithful and constant, always near.

After that, I felt so much better and was able to relax a little bit more. Me and the people in my van had some great prayer time for a few different things. We prayed for my sister to get her stolen stuff back and for my back (which, by the way, I have somehow done something to...not good...very painful) and also for safe travel. Then we headed out and...watched KUNG FU PANDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep, that's right, I totally bought a copy of Kung Fu Panda for 80B ($2.50).

When we got to the hotel, we dropped off our stuff and headed for the beach. It was soooo beautiful. I took so many pictures (SIDENOTE: the next post will be pictures from retreat). We started the day off with some worship and an opening message from Pastor Kelly. He talked to us about Spiritual Disciplines and about solitude and how we just need to spend time ALONE with the Lord. Away from people and distraction and just listen to what He has to say to us. He talked about other disciplines as well, like fasting and tithing. It was a very good message...a little long but very good. I kept scanning the place and I think just about everyone did the "falling asleep head nod" at least once.

Our night worship service was just amazing. The Lord so gently whispered that He was going to take care of me and that I didn't have to worry. The presence of the Lord is just so overwhelming. It's so hard to keep yourself together when the Lord grabs a hold of you and just wraps you up in His arms...It's just the best place to be. After day 1 festivities ended, some of us headed to the beach. Like I said, the Lord plans things really amazingly. It ended up being me, Sarah Jane, Cindy, and Evan just talking for a couple hours. We were able to share our thoughts and struggles and positives and everything else. I was totally encouraged by worship and everything else that I was able to be honest about the ups and downs of the last 3 months. After we were all done talking we all prayed with each other and for each other. It was just a really nice time of fellowship and relationship and I am just really thankful for the time.

Friday, we started with worship and a devotion from one of the Australian missionaries, Mandy. She talked about worship and being in the presence of the Lord and expressing yourself through different ways, so when she was done, we spent a few more minutes in worship. Just singing a new song to the Lord. Inviting Him to walk with us and thanking Him for how great He is and just whatever the Spirit put on our hearts. I think it was stretching for some but very positive. After breakfast, it was time for a little practical application. We spent an hour in solitude with the Lord.

I just walked the beach for an hour and talked to the Lord. I cried, a lot, worshiped Him and listened to whatever He had to speak to me. It was an awesome time to just be and receive. I was slightly encouraged and really drained after that hour though. I was just kind of tired but pushed through because I was promised that the Lord would take care of me and everything that I had to do. One of the things they had to visiting missionaries do is an English teaching for the Thai staff. Me and Kirstin were in charge of Grammar...yeah...I don't really know anything about grammar. So, I wasn't really looking forward to having to teach it for 90 mins but I was trying to be positive. We ended up running late and only having 30 mins of time with the staff. We also ended up only have 4 people in our group. It was really low key and not stressful at all. We just had them ask questions, we went over complete sentences, and did some mad libs. It was actually really nice.

After that we did some other stuff, ate dinner, and had service, which was all really good. The hotel cooked all our meals and they were like for real Thai meals...aka: I didn't eat anything. Literally. So Friday night, I ate a granola bar and a fruit snack and headed off to take a shower and go to bed. After I ate, I started to feel really sick, I figured a shower would help so I kind of just ignored it a little. When I got back to the room, my stomach started to cramp up and well the end result of that was just not cool at all...then as soon as the not coolness ended, I started throwing up...also not cool at all. After all of that I felt like junk so I took a freezing cold shower (our hotel didn't have any hot water) and passed out.

Sorry, I know I said I was going to try to make this not super long, but I just can't help myself. I'm almost done I promise. Saturday went really good. The Lord put mine and Kirstin's thoughts together quite nicely in our talk with the youth leaders. They asked questions, we gave ideas, and told them a lot about how we do things at the church. Kirstin talked about High School group and what she likes about it and what works for her and what doesn't. I think it helped them a lot to be able to hear from someone still in the age group.

On the way home we stopped at the Turtle Conservatory and Museum. Have a mentioned lately that I love turtles? They we so cute. They had little babies up to like 9 months old so you could see the differences in their growth at different ages. Then we walked down to where you could actually touch the turtles in a big tank. I didn't reach my hand in their though because the water looked really dirty...the conservatory was right up against the water's edge so we took a bunch of pictures and just enjoyed the view. After that we headed for Bangkok, watching I Love Lucy the whole way...I was in heaven! We watched some of my favorite episodes including, Lucy does a TV commercial, Ricky things he's getting bald, and Lucy's Schedule. Sooooo good!!!!!!

When we got home, I went to the bathroom (again...), unpacked, did a load of laundry, finished putting pictures on here and then headed for the movies. So, that was my weekend in a very large nutshell. This is what I will leave you with...Retreat was fantastic and really refreshing and Batman was amazing! Check out some pictures of retreat too. Hopefully I will get them added tonight, if not, tomorrow. Love you all!