Toque 2011 is this weekend!

The Youth group retreat, called Toque, is almost here, meaning it starts tomorrow.  I organize and run this retreat at camp.  I am excited and nervous and feel as though I have missed something!  I guess I will find out in the next 3 days.  Today I am off, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes more stressful before a big event.  I am spending much of the day in prayer and study, which will help me not to worry.  So if you are out there praying, please spend some time on Toque.  We have 124 guests coming, plus staff!  We moved the couches out of the dining hall because it's going to be so full.  Cristy Williams (my friend from across the lake at Ellel Ministries) is speaking and we have some talented people lined up to lead worship and help run activities!  I am hoping to have some photos from the weekend but there are no guarantees, so even if there are no pictures, I will write an update about it.  

It sometimes makes my laugh that I am still organizing retreats.  When I was in high school, I was part of a youth group that mainly met in the retreat context, as we were from near and far across Manitoba.  We started running a Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) weekend when I was 16 years old, but we also ran retreat weekend for 'tween' aged kids.  We started organizing retreats when I was about 16 or 17 because we wanted to give the same experience to younger kids that we had.  Our herioc youth leaders allowed us to give it a try and we ran atleast 3 or 4 weekend retreats for the younger crowd and I was involved in running TEC for atleast 4 years.  And here I am now, still organizing and running retreats.  Ironically, the retreat I run now is larger in terms of people attending but far less intense in structure.  

So Thank You to G.P., G.N and C.A. (and everyone else who helped out with Hosers and TEC) for those dedicated years of allowing us to make dreams reality and for encouraging us to try out things we had never done before.  Who knew I would be running retreats as part of my job one day!

Even more astounding is that I am still good friends with a number of my fellow 'youth'!  We still email, talk, visit and pray for/with each other.  It is amazing to think that we have known each other for over 20 years and are still connected.  I love that Jesus does that in our lives, connects that which would otherwise drift apart or fall apart.  He is so gracious and kind to us!  I hope you have the experience of knowing people for long enough that it's like coming home when you see them and you can just share what's going on in your life with them.  I am blessed to have known and been known like this in my life!