Team Spiritual Retreat

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Team Spiritual Retreat

September 8

Thank you for praying for our retreat it was great. For those of you who don’t know, on Wednesday we were suppose to go to Mbale for our team spiritual retreat but because of all the rain both routes to Mbale were closed due to the bridges being out or underwater. We were disappointed but found out God had good plans for us right here in Soroti. We all hung out at our house Wednesday and organized for a retreat here. Thursday our children went with our teammates Karen and Beckie for the day. They did a Bible story, sang, danced, walked to town, got lunch, did a craft… and loved it. The adults on our team met at our house for a morning and afternoon session of worship, listening to Prayer Remix by Louis Gigglio, discussion and pray. We all learned, were challenged, laughed and grew. We also enjoyed a wonderful lunch together at Soroti Hotel – and other goodies and coffee at our sessions. Sometimes I forget how much I need to stop the rest of life and be fed (not with food but spiritually). It was a blessing to me to relax and be renewed in God’s presence.

Friday we resumed for a morning session and ended our retreat with lunch at the hotel with everyone. How thankful I am for our team, for this retreat and God’s plan in it all. I was a bit tired and bummed when it was done and we had to go back to normal life, but most of all I am so grateful.

In case you wanted to know, the word in town was the bridge opened up the next day but it also rained every day this week so you who knows.

I want to share with you a little what we learned at our retreat.

1. We are completely blessed with all God has for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:13-14 and Eph. 1:3-14). SO we need to change our prayers from God bless me, this, my plans… to I want to bless you God.

2. We often pray, “God be with us” but God lives IN us through His Holy Spirit (John 14:15-17, Eph. 3:16-20 and Col. 1:27-29) so we need to change our prayers to, “God live through me.”

3. Our prayers for God to watch over us and protection us need to be prayed in the light that God has a greater mission on earth. (Examples; Jesus the Son of God still suffered and died, Stephen a man of faith was killed, Paul suffered greatly for Christ…) We need to learn to pray, “God uses me in the mission.”

After our fun week all of our kiddos have colds and are in need of some extra sleep this week.

You can be praying for Grace. She is our child who doesn’t like change. Change is upsetting to her. With two weeks left before we go to Michigan she is becoming emotional. When we didn’t get to go on our retreat to Mbale Grace was crying I tried to cheer her with the fact that we would get to go to Michigan soon. That only made her cry more because she only has a couple weeks with her good friend and cousin Avalien. We all know Grace is excited to go to Michigan but it is hard to leave here too. We all feel some of it.

Hey, the girls finally felt the baby move this weekend!

Praying all of you have experienced God this week and know His blessings upon your life. May we bless Him this coming week!