Young Adults Retreat in Snowy Manning
Last month, a dozen young adults from Willoughby Church joined a group of local churches on a retreat to Manning Park. Let me fill you in on what happened on the retreat. Full disclaimer: it was not very different from what you would expect.
We headed to Manning in various cars on Friday afternoon and evening. All the young adults from the other churches, about 60 people total, gathered together Friday evening to learn about the schedule for the weekend, some ground rules, and a fun mixer game of rock, paper, scissors. We stayed in two cabins over the weekend where we slept, ate, and watched some Olympics! The following day, Saturday, some of our group headed to the slopes for a day skiing and boarding and all returned without any injuries! Myself and some others headed to Lightning Lakes for a lovely snowshoe and enjoyed beautiful mountain scenery, wildlife, and the exhaustion of trudging through the snow.
Saturday evening and Sunday morning our own Sam and Jordan led the group in acoustic worship. A speaker followed, teaching us about how to live biblically in an age of narcissism, and how our unique talents and skills can fit into the work of the Kingdom. The topics were relevant and stimluating, providing a lot of material for lively conversations and debates among the atttendees. If you find these topics interesting, I would encourage you to chat or invite over a young adult that attended this retreat.
Overall, this retreat was awesome. It was well attended, well organized, and absolutely beautiful in the snow mountains of the Sunshine Valley. But this retreat also signifies something else. For Willoughby church, we had 12 young adults come together for this retreat, and this is a group of people that have never gathered all together before. It was an absolute blessing to spend a weekend with such a lovely group of people. My hope and prayer is that this retreat has sparked an interest for our young adults to continue gathering together for fellowship, discussion, and discipleship.