There are a lot of things that I learned over the Silent Retreat. But I will highlight on the ones that really stuck out for me. The first few hours, I took a nap. Then woke up 5 minutes before dinner was over......not too much fun to jet out of bed and eat cold, dry hamburgers. After dinner, I wrote in my journal for a while and it was awesome. I read a lot of my Bible and had some awesome down time with God.
Then........I fell asleep on Wednesday night.......and woke up at around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. If you're wondering, it was around a 15 hour sleep. Yeah, I'm a good sleeper, what can I say, it's my gift.
From around 2:30 until 5, I read some more of my Bible, wrote in my journal, prayed, and sat in silence. At 5, I, along with everyone else headed down to the Great Room for dinner. We didn't start eating until around 5:20ish, so we sat around for 20 some minutes in silence, with everyone else sitting around each other. Some people might have felt weird, but there is something powerful about enjoying each other's company without feeling like we had to talk, be crazy, or funny (that was hard for me). After an amazing dinner that SonJa prepared, I went out with my mentor, Joanna (yes, we are both named Joanna and she is my mentor) for about an hour. MBMSI has set us up with mentors from the Abbotsford area, and they assigned Joanna Shantz as my mentor. She's awesome! She did TREK about 4 years ago, and she was the leader of her group as well. It has been awesome to get insight and wisdom from someone who has been in the same position as me. And so during the Silent Retreat, TREK set us up to meet with our mentors for about an hour and talk through stuff half-way through the retreat. It was really good to get some thoughts straightened out by verbalizing them and Joanna helping me. As she prayed for me, she quoted some verses from Psalm 23, and after she finished praying she told me that she felt like I should read and look into Psalm 23. So I got back to my room and did that. I drew a line down the middle of my journal, wrote one verse of the Psalm on one side and then wrote some things that really stuck out at me about the verse on the other side of the line. Then went on to the next verse. I did that to all 6 verses of the Psalm and it was a very affirming time from God. The main thing that I got out of that, and it was probably the highlight of the whole Silent Retreat was that "I will not fear evil, for You [God] are with me." Even though there have been some very hard times in life, God has always been there for me, He's here for me right now, and He will be there for me later. And that was very evident as I went through the Psalm.
After I finished with that Psalm, I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and we had our debrief with Steve Klassen (TREK founder and MARK Centre owner), and it was really good to hear everyone else share a bit about what they had experienced throughout the retreat. I love the people here. I think I've mentioned that before on my blog, but in case you missed it, I love the people here! God is evident in everyone of us and it's awesome to dive into this time of my life with them.
That's kinda a small overview of the Silent Retreat from my perspective. I will be writing about our "adventure" that we had yesterday and it started at 5 a.m. Stay tuned.......
Then........I fell asleep on Wednesday night.......and woke up at around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. If you're wondering, it was around a 15 hour sleep. Yeah, I'm a good sleeper, what can I say, it's my gift.
From around 2:30 until 5, I read some more of my Bible, wrote in my journal, prayed, and sat in silence. At 5, I, along with everyone else headed down to the Great Room for dinner. We didn't start eating until around 5:20ish, so we sat around for 20 some minutes in silence, with everyone else sitting around each other. Some people might have felt weird, but there is something powerful about enjoying each other's company without feeling like we had to talk, be crazy, or funny (that was hard for me). After an amazing dinner that SonJa prepared, I went out with my mentor, Joanna (yes, we are both named Joanna and she is my mentor) for about an hour. MBMSI has set us up with mentors from the Abbotsford area, and they assigned Joanna Shantz as my mentor. She's awesome! She did TREK about 4 years ago, and she was the leader of her group as well. It has been awesome to get insight and wisdom from someone who has been in the same position as me. And so during the Silent Retreat, TREK set us up to meet with our mentors for about an hour and talk through stuff half-way through the retreat. It was really good to get some thoughts straightened out by verbalizing them and Joanna helping me. As she prayed for me, she quoted some verses from Psalm 23, and after she finished praying she told me that she felt like I should read and look into Psalm 23. So I got back to my room and did that. I drew a line down the middle of my journal, wrote one verse of the Psalm on one side and then wrote some things that really stuck out at me about the verse on the other side of the line. Then went on to the next verse. I did that to all 6 verses of the Psalm and it was a very affirming time from God. The main thing that I got out of that, and it was probably the highlight of the whole Silent Retreat was that "I will not fear evil, for You [God] are with me." Even though there have been some very hard times in life, God has always been there for me, He's here for me right now, and He will be there for me later. And that was very evident as I went through the Psalm.
After I finished with that Psalm, I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and we had our debrief with Steve Klassen (TREK founder and MARK Centre owner), and it was really good to hear everyone else share a bit about what they had experienced throughout the retreat. I love the people here. I think I've mentioned that before on my blog, but in case you missed it, I love the people here! God is evident in everyone of us and it's awesome to dive into this time of my life with them.
That's kinda a small overview of the Silent Retreat from my perspective. I will be writing about our "adventure" that we had yesterday and it started at 5 a.m. Stay tuned.......
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