Aberdeen Retreat!

I have a couple of thoughts about the Aberdeen retreat... It went really well and I was so encouraged to see that we could bless the River of Life church family and all. I was also really happy to hear the good report from people on the trip that they learned a lot and it really impacted them!

On Friday night, we left Tacoma a little later than I wanted (after a interesting debacle trying to get the vans I had reserved from Campus Safety, but that is not important to my story) and went to get gas. All three drivers, Dan Donohoue, Carl Pierce and I thought we knew where the station was and we all kinda scattered! We ended up deciding to turn around and get on the freeway and stop at the first Shell station we found. We had to turn around in a strip club parking lot!!! This illustrated the fact that it was an attack from satan and made me laugh. His plan backfired on him, he was trying to get me frustrated and angry from the start, but the strip club was too obvious and it made me laugh!

We got to Aberdeen and everything worked out really well. Jake Broady and Doug Marks both shared with us about stuff and it was all really good!!! We also got to do some service for the people of the church and some community members. Aberdeen had a really large windstorm that weekend and the power had gone out and come back on a couple of times, so we walked around and handed out candles and matches to people so they could have a light in case the power went out! Other people got to go and scrape paint off a house and paint the inside dining room or chop and stack some wood. Overall it was a huge win with the service projects.

On Saturday night, we partnered with the Agape club from Grays Harbor Community College and had a worship night. It was kind of lower key and more intimate which was cool. The leader of the Agape club, Mallory, said something that I had never heard before. She said that in the geneology of Jesus, on of the guys names means "praise" and he named his son "breakthrough" so as it says in Matthew chapter 1... Praise begets breakthrough" and I thought that was really cool!

Sunday morning was good, I finally got everybody up and we got the place cleaned up in time for the worship team to come in and practice on time. We were able to spend some time debriefing about the weekend and the things that we had learned. Sunday service was good and we got home at tht time I promised everyone!!!

Things that I learned from the weekend, was to not really sweat the small stuff. So what if 3 people did not get up when they were supposed to. So the UC shorted us lots of food and people were hungry every once in a while. Overall I learned what it is really like to be in charge of something and it was really good to have it go off well. On the way home from Aberdeen, I was driving by myself and I got to spend some time with Jesus and thank Him for carying me over the weekend. The only way that I was able to stay sane for he whole weekend was because Jesus gave me the strength. I know that this won't be the last thing that I plan and it may not be the best or the worst thing I ever am a part of, but it was fun and I enjoyed it!

Jake gave me some really encouraging words after church on Sunday and overall I could tell that they were all really blessed. I hope that we get to go back there and see them again, because I think that the team caught a vision of servanthood and all the cool things that happen when we step out and serve people in His name.