Confirmation Retreat Day 1

We arrived at St. Anne's in the Mountains at around 10:30am I believe. I was a bit anxious because I had never led a group in a retreat before. My heart was pounding when I stepped inside to meet all the retreatants because I wasn't sure if they would like me or not. I joked around with the other leaders saying "I'm scared they're gonna pick on me 'cause I'm little." hehe.

Anyway, my fear went away pretty fast when I was able to interact with all of them. We had an icebreaker where we played the shooting game. Basically, when I pointed to someone, they had to duck and the people standing on both sides of that person has to shoot each other by imitating a shooting position and saying "bang." If the person in the middle was too slow and got shot, he/she had to introduce name and one fun fact; same went for the person who was slower in saying "bang." Now, I was beginning to feel comfortable.

We had a couple of activities for the kids to interact with each other and get to know one another and the leaders. We then had lunch, which was delicious! I regret not seizing the opportunity to take a picture of it, but it was pretty darn good AND spicy, just the way I like it!

Anyway, somewhere in the program, there was praise and worship. EEKK! I was pretty doubtful of my capabilities at this point, but I just went with it anyway. I taught them an action song called " We Wanna See Jesus Lifted High." It was pretty hard playing guitar, singing, and trying to do some of the actions with them, but I did it, with lots of mistakes, but I did it. =] Another song I taught them was "Light The Fire In My Heart Again." This one was full of mistakes on my guitar, but it was pretty fun. The kids had such a tough time singing the split part where the guys sang melody, and the girls sang the descant/harmony. I think they had a lot of fun with that song. I think after that, I got pretty comfortable with the idea of messing up...a lot.

I think my biggest fear though, was leading the small group discussions. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to help them to open up and share, and I was afraid they wouldn't get anything out of the small group sharings. The first small group sharing that we had, well actually almost all the small group sharings that we had, I was the one to share first. I can tell it was tough for some of my kids to open up but in the end, they all shared something, even if it was in two sentences. I was amazed at some of the sharings because it was very personal. I'm so thankful that they were able to trust me and each other enough to share. God definitely had something to do with that.

Anyway, my bad memory is kickin' in right now. I don't remember exactly what else we did because I don't have my planner with me but, overall, the first day was awesome. Most of the leaders decided to sleep in the main room where the fireplace was. E-team (environmental team I think, they help us with all the preparations when we're in meetings) and Mike (oh, Mike is the confirmation teacher) slept in the cabins with the kids. It was such a humbling experience for me because I forgot my sleeping bag at home, so Alex used his sleeping bag as the mat and Jimmy offered his sleeping bag so we used it as a blanket and just shared it. The fireplace was a plus until all the wood burned out. Big thanks to Jimmy for offering his sleeping bag and slept through the cold.

Okay, I'm sure this blog is long enough, so I'll stop it here. Have a good night everyone. =] Wait, actually I should say peace and God bless because some of you may not be reading this at night. Durrhh Tracy... x_X

Confirmation Retreat to be continued...