I myself am not an outdoors man, so the thought of spending my weekend in a tent doesn’t usually appeal to me. However, the annual wilderness retreat for me is always an exception. Besides the fact that we  do spend most of our time in a lodge, the time spent with friends and the spiritual emphasis makes the cold nights and the annoying bugs almost nothing at all to over come.

This is how the trip has been thus far:

We all met at the church at 10:30 a.m. and loaded our luggage into the back of the vans. Once we have been given our van assignments we marked out our seats and got ready for the 6 hour drive to the middle of nowhere. On the way, we stopped at the mall in Fort Wayne for a bite to eat. While most people don’t realize this, the urinals in that mall are at an extremely uncomfortable height, forcing most people to wait in line for the child-sized one. We had a little time to spend in the mall, although I didn’t have any money to spend on over priced junk anyways, so this wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world for me. I did spend a good chunk of time in MC Sports trying out the equipment there and proving once and for all that no one needs that stuff anyways. Once 2 o’clock rolled around, we made our way back to the van and started traveling again. We stopped again for food around 5:30, and then finally reached our destination around 7ish (don’t hold me to these times. It’s not like I was actually paying attention to the clock). Once we arrived, the girls chose their rooms while the guys set up their tents. (Disclaimer: Waters Edge Ministries is not sexist. We understand that women are perfectly capable of sleeping outside, but why would they want to? Beds are far more comfortable than the ground and the men here, chivalrous as we are, volunteer to let the girls take those comfortable beds). At 10:30ish, we all settled in for devotions, where Brad gave us a lesson out of the book of Ephesians. At midnight, we made our way out to the “hole” and played a couple games of Underground Church. As far as i’m concerned, my team won everything. We got back to the lodge around 2 in the morning and went to bed.

This morning began with a warm cup of coffee and a hearty breakfast of buscuits and gravy. When you include the fact that Matt Hurst and i were pretty much domination euchre (kind of), it was a great morning. After that, we went for a hike until we reached a clearing with a cross in the middle. There, we all sat down and tried our hardest to pay attention to Brad while being assaulted by various insects and furry creatures (like Bam Bam). Brad read Psalm 147 to us 3 times, telling us to really focus on the words that stuck out to us. Personally, I really noticed the verse that says “he heals the broken-hearted”. We then went off on our own to further digest the passage that he had shared with us. After that, we all gathered up and went on to the sand dune. You can’t have much more fun with sand than we did there, although I myself never went up the dune, but only because I didn’t want to suffer the consequences of doing so. While everyone else got covered in sand and covered in bugs, I watch and enjoyed the show of my friends rolling around in sand. At the conclusion of that, we came back to the lodge and here we are now.

Soon, we’ll head on out to Lake Michigan where we can spend as much time as we like in the freezing water. Fun. After that, we’ll go get ice cream and then make our way back to the lodge. Hopefully I’ll actually be allowed to go inside the ice cream shop, unlike last year as I had no shoes. I’ll do better about that this year.