Kaitlin's Story

For those of you who don’t know me my name is Kaitlin and I went on winter retreat this year and it was amazing. I mean truly amazing; no other words could describe it. I was on the orange team and we came in last, but that wasn’t the point the point was to grow in our faith and worship God.

So, we got there Friday and got all pumped up and we had all of orange stuff on probably looking like complete idiots and we were screaming and yelling, "yeaahhhh orange team wooohooo!" I mean that’s all we really had because we were just so lucky to get a color that didn’t rhyme with anything. But you were lucky not to lose your voice. All of the services were amazing but Saturday night’s worship really hit me. Devin was giving the message and you know we were all pumped in the first row and all of the sudden it got serious and emotional but in a good way. He was talking about giving God everything you had.  Earlier that day I had gone through the experiential activity and one of the rooms had all these different art stations. One was drawing, painting, origami, clay and all the walls were covered in paper.  So, I drew this huge dove and wrote my savior in the center.

Then, during session Devin brought out a canvas that had a picture of a heart that wasn’t fully colored in and it said "not yet fully formed" and I think that was everyone's case on the retreat. Our hearts weren't fully given to God. Reflecting on what Mitch said on retreat which was, "it's always Jesus and sports or Jesus and friends not just Jesus."  And I realized that was true for me too.  So, they placed little index cards on our chairs and told us to write what we are going to give to God or trust him with and on mine I wrote "my future".  Which has been the scariest but most satisfying moment I have ever experienced because I don’t know what he has planned for me but I trust him enough to allow him to take total control over my future. So, we sang our last song and I lost it I started crying and here I am with all this orange makeup on my face crying probably looking like a hot mess, but I didn’t care because I felt God had really touched me and spoken to me.

The coolest moment of the night is when all 108 kids plus adults walked to their pods in complete silence. Not one word was said and it was so powerful that kids our age can stay silent for that long of time and respect that time and I could go on forever, but if I had one word of advice it would be to go on winter retreat. Even if you’re going because your parents are making you or you’re just in it for the food. Go, you will definitely get more out of it then food. Thank you.