Dear Friends,
With a huge thanks to our awesome adult advisors, I’m pleased to announce that the youth group had a WONDERFUL retreat at Tahoe this weekend! As I continue to unpack, decompress, and write up my learnings and reminders for next time, my Contact piece will be shorter this week, but here are the highlights.
– Despite many misgivings and fears, the weather was perfect! It did not snow while we were there, and the roads were easy driving, but there was plenty leftover snow to throw at one another – check out this action shot of Nazareth narrowly missing Brendan’s ear:
The theme (repeated from something Rev. Katie Morrison had done with them 4 years ago) was “finding your niche” and we took this in two different directions. In one, we gave each other a lot of affirmations and positive feedback, encouraging each person to see that they have unique gifts to offer and an important role to play in the ecosystem of our group, our community, and the world. In another direction, we built wooden “niches” as physical reminders of our own uniqueness, and prayed for them to be reminders for us of the love that surrounds us. The youth started enthusiastically crafting at midnight on Friday (!!!) and didn’t stop until Sunday morning. Here are some of the results:
In addition to our program time, we had a lot of fun in the beauty of nature:
We had a lot of fun enjoying Jeremy and Cindi’s kids (whom you may remember as the Christmas Pageant Baby Jesuses, years 2014 and 2016). Lots of teenagers got to hold the baby or to “have a dance party” to the Wheels on the Bus with the toddler:
And, finally, we did a little more celebrating of our fabulous class of high school seniors. This will be their last retreat until they come back as young adult advisors (I’m counting on them in 2021) and we are going to miss them so much! But what a great group we had and a wonderful retreat.
Watch MPC’s flickr page for more photos: flickr
I’ll be on a short vacation with Michael this weekend, and back in the office next Monday.
Every Blessing,
Talitha