hey friends! this past weekend I had a chance to go to the WKND, a super fun winter retreat type thing our church does with a ton of other area churches. I also went last year, which was also a blast, which made me even more pumped for this year! We did so many things in the two and a half days we had, and it was so crazy, exciting, and fun!!! I thought it would be fun if I shared my experience with you guys, so, a day after it ended, I am cramming it into my schedule so I can get it out Tuesday (which is now today). I will be walking through it day by day, with tons of pictures I took! I found it funny that I took so many pictures of one event and then 0 pictures of another. Whelp, you’ll have to imagine it lol.
Friday
Eep! All day I was so ecstatic and excited and somehow finished school, chores, finishing packing and cleaning my room before we left to run a few errands before my mom and siblings dropped me off! We stopped by the store and I got some of these Hershey’s Nuggets, and they were truffles, which were so good and a huge hit with my host home group. After that, we dropped my brother at Jiu-jitsu, went to the library, picked him up, and then headed to the church!! The church that the retreat was based at actually wasnt my home church, but is a church that we actually thought about attending when we were in the process of moving here! Anyways, once we got there, I saw my friend Sophie in the parking lot and we chatted for a bit, signed in, got out t-shirts, wristbands, and dropped our luggage off. Then, we headed to the cafeteria and ate pizza! I hung out with a few of my girlfriends and then headed over to hang out with my worship team friends.
Me, Anabelle, Mady, Eily, and Sophia
After that, we got ready to head into the worship center!! Everyone was so excited and the energy was contagious.
Me, Natalie, Brey, and Eli
Me and my worship team friends sate together, as well as my friend Macie, and we hung out for 15 more minutes until service started. We did Church Clap, which I am a pro at after doing at VBS two years in a row, and the cotton eye Joe..? song….I think that’s what its called….🤷🏻♀️….I don’t name the song I do the dance 😂.
After that, everyone sat back down and got ready for the service! We started by playing a few games, and one of them was pocket treasure hunt. I was wearing my Chucks and when they asked for a shoelace, I started untying mine so fast, we got it all the way out, and then the other team won. XD. The worship was wayyyyy chiller than last year, where they played songs like I Thank God and it was super hype, but I honestly enjoyed it the same amount. They were all amazing songs that fit with the message so well. Grant, the speaker, did an amazing job starting us off, and the main point was how, when we have guests over, we straighten up the house, make it look nice. And some of us do the same thing with God, but we don’t need to and we shouldn’t.
After Grant finished, we had a few more songs, and then headed back to our host homes. The 7th and 8th and the 6th grade girls broke off into groups to chat about the session and then we got ready for bed, and watched TV. We watched The Royal Treatment on Netflix, which was more like the cringe treatment, and somehow, between the 10 of us finished two large boxes of Capri Suns, a large thing of double stuf Oreos, and two packs of Fudge Stripes, as well as sooo many freakin bags of chips and 100 something pixie sticks.
We ended up going to bed at midnight, even though with talking, all the people who forgot to brush their teeth, and the randomest issues, we ended up going to bed at 1:30.
Saturday
We started off the day by waking up at 6:45 to my friend Anabelle’s British alarm blaring “Good morning. It is now 6:45am on Saturday the 16th. The weather is 29 degrees Fahrenheit, -1 degrees Celsius.” Everyone realized the time and when we had to leave and jumped up to get ready and eat breakfast. I had Raspberry Danish, which is the absolute best breakfast pastry everrrrr.
We headed to the church around 9:00 because doors opened at 9:15, and me and Natalie found our friends and sat down. They played one of my favorite worship songs, Same God, which I also love to lead, and it was so cool hearing it live and out of someones else’s mouth XD.
The 2nd session was two hours long and I am so surprised my friends or I didn’t fall asleep. After the session, we had Chick-fil-a for lunch and I had a sandwich, and a cookie. I threw my chips up in the crowd and I hope it didn’t hit anyone 😂.
no one noticed me taking a picture 😂
After that, we hung out a bit in the foyer of the church and chatted and ran around. I also took some funny Panoramas but I won’t be showing those because some people thought they looked bad, so you’ll just have to imagine it 😂. We also made plans for that afternoon to go play volleyball with some of the middle school guys, which we were super excited for! Then, we headed back to the host homes for our discussions/breakout sessions. We were all sooo tired so a few of us took power naps and watched Tall Girl, which we also watched the year before lol.
me ⬆️
We also had some more food even though we just had ate at the church. Then me, Macie, and Natalie, the only girls who wanted to go play volleyball, got ready to go and waited for the guys on the front porch, trying to pick out an annoying song to play when they showed up…until, turns out, they didn’t have enough room for us in the car so one of our leaders took us. We got there first and got some Girl Scout cookies, which are the best literal things ever, and devored a thing of Thin Mints before the guys got there. Then we set up the net and split up teams. The sane was wet like it is at the beach, and only me and my friend Eli were wearing shorts and a few kids didn’t take their shoes off and had wet sand in their shoes by the end XD. It was 6 v. 6 and it was so fun. We played 3 games and lost the first two, but decided they were practice rounds lol, and then won the “Championship” game.
After that, we quickly headed back to our host homes to change for dinner, session 3, and the silent disco!! Us girls ate more cookies, drank more soda, and somehow finished 3 packages of Wherthers caramels. We all changed into our neon shirts (I had an orange shirt) and our leaders did tinsel in our hair. Then we quickly headed to our own church to have dinner! We had fried chicken, the best Mac n cheese ever, green beans, and the cutest little pies. Somehow I didn’t take any pictures though 🤦🏻♀️. After we ate, we hung out there for a while and then headed to the main church for the last session!! Everyone was so hyped up and excited for the silent disco!! We did church clap again, and the YMCA, and so many fun songs like that, took group photos, and then got down to business.
Natalie, me and Macie before the last session!! Matching hair XD
Before the last session!! Me, Carson, Eli, and Natalie!
How everyone just really leaned into worshiping put their hearts into was so amazing and really motivated everyone. Grant did a great job and told some really powerful stories and really did a great job.
After Grant left, our student pastors came up and told us a bit about the silent disco, and our middle school director dressed up and looked hilarious!! The other student pastor told us to slowly walk out of the worship center, but we ran out of there and grabbed headphones.
They played some great ins the eveyrone knew, and when you took your headphones off, everyone screaming “Baby Oh” and “Shut Up and Dance With Me” just made everyone happy and have a great time. I loved how they played so old songs, some new songs, and a mix of everything!
Everyone formed a conga line to do the Macarena, got in a huge square to do the Cupid Shuffle, the Cha-Cha Slide, everyone screamed their hearts out for Into the Unknown.
Jumping up and down and singing at each other…it was so dang fun!! It felt like 30 minutes had gone by when all the sudden, no matter what station you were one, the music just stopped. Everyone was so disappointed that it was the end, but then ran for the snack table and grabbed everything they could carry. I grabbed like 50 fruit chews because I am weird and like that candy 😂. We said bye to all our peeps and then got ready to head back to the house. We had our breakout sessions, and one of us fell asleep, watched part of Tall Girl 2, and then headed right bed so we would be rested for church in the morning. Yet again, we stayed up wayyy to late yelling at people to go to bed 😂.
Sunday
Yikes! The day started by me being the first to wake up at 7:40, 10 minutes late. I ran around telling everyone to get up because we had to leave in 40 minutes. And when you’ve got 10 girls who need to get ready for church, you need all the time in the world. I ended up being ready early, since we didn’t really have to put together an outfit because we were all wearing our The WKND shirts. Me and Natalie left early to head to the student building at church for breakfast and I had a waffle with so much whipped cream on it, and a blueberry muffin, cause, hey, when is it a bad time for a blueberry muffin???
We hung out with some of the guys again and then all the middle and high schoolers went outside to play Gaga ball. We played 5 or 6 games and I made the top 5 twice!!
After that, we all headed to the main building for service and to meet up with our families. And mom and dad told me Cash ran away. (don’t worry, we found him later that day) After service, we headed back to the student building and got my stuff, and then headed home. Man it felt good to sleep in my own bed that night 😂.
Well that is all! I had a super fun weekend and I hope you guys enjoyed reading this! Let me know in the comments if you did, and if you’d like to see more posts like this!
Have you ever been to a winter retreat? Was it fun? What was your favorite part? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
-Mayim
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