Recovering After the First Ever Youth Revolution Retreat

A Week of Hard Work

Last week I spent a ton of time putting together the lessons for the retreat.  I wanted to have four lessons for the weekend.  One on Friday night, two on Saturday, and one on Sunday morning.  Right now the majority of the teens in the youth group are non-believers.  Because of this I wanted to make sure that the message of God's mercy and our need for salvation was very evident throughout the weekend.  The title of the weekend was, "The Difference Christ Can Make."  I wanted to show how much Christ can change a person and I chose to do that by looking at the life of Paul.  It took a lot of work to study and put it in a form that would hold the attention of teenagers but I left Friday feeling pretty good about it.

An Interesting Start to the Weekend

On Friday afternoon most of the group met at the bus station and began our trip to the mountains.  It was interesting to be traveling with a group of teenagers that know each other on public transportation.  Everyone else is just traveling home from work or school, quiet and just minding their own business, and I am sitting with a group of teens laughing and joking with one another.  Petr, drove up to the cabin in his car, taking Radek and carrying the food.  When we got there we found out that the bus dropped us off a station before the one that we were trying to get to so we had to walk with our luggage.  When we reached the bus station that we were trying to get to Petr met us and grabbed the luggage for us, told a couple of people how to get to cabin, and drove off.  Those people took off and started running up the hill.  The majority of us started walking up the hill trying to follow the path but we took a wrong turn and ended up having to about 300 yards below the cabin so we had to climb up a hill in the woods at about a 60 degree angle.  I did not have the right shoes for this.  Needless to say I was exhausted and filthy after making it up the hill.  The white shoes I was wearing will be going in the washing machine.  I hated every minute of that climb but I was so encourage to see the heart of Julian, Petr's oldest son who waiting with me and made sure that I made it up the hill.  What a kind heart.  After a short search for those who went running we were able to settle in and start the weekend.

Some views from the cabin.  I would have liked to have better pictures but it was foggy all weekend long.

The Weekend

We had 16 people attend the retreat this weekend.  Thirteen teens and three adults, Petr, Radim, and myself.  It was great to have three leaders there because we were able to have smaller discussion groups after some of the lessons.  The discussions were great and there were some good questions asked, some of them were tough questions.  The discussion questions required the teens to really consider what they believe about what they had heard and what they thought about themselves.  We didn't have anyone proclaim Christ this weekend but it was obvious from some of the discussions that a few of the teens were really questioning.  Pray for these teens that the Lord would continue to work in their hearts.  For some, this may be the first time that they have considered eternity.  We watched the movie "Son of God," for them to see what Jesus suffered on our behalf to start off the weekend.  We had worship led by Patrik, Tána, and Radim.  We played some capture the flag on Saturday evening with minimal injuries, Praise the Lord.  And we played some games together.  The weather was not great but it was an excellent weekend and something that all the teens would love to do again.

Worship 

 

Hanging out

Patrik, focused before Capture the Flag

Matouš preparing our team's flag

Terka and Klara being goofy as always

Barča attempting to hide from the camera

Natka and Kateřina

So glad that Radek could make it over the weekend

Julian flexing his muscles 

Dominka is all smiles

Tána and Patrik handled all the cooking this weekend and it was good.  I did teach them how to make hamburgers though.

Katka and Matouš taking their turn washing the dishes

Thank you all for praying so fervently for this weekend.  Your prayers were felt during the preparation and during the weekend.