What a weekend!!! We had such a wonderful time at our retreat and how the Lord did bless!!! It was so exciting to see the ladies follow God's Spirit and receive blessings galore. I was bushed when I got home Sunday, but happy for all that God did.
I started working on the retreat back in late January and worked right up until it started at 3 p.m. on Friday. It was a lot of work, but it was fun getting it all together. I enjoy planning events like that so it was a blessing for me to get to do it. Sister Smith helped me greatly by sending documents of information she'd learned and saved over the years of planning herself. Since I'd only been to two ladies' retreat probably eight and nine years ago (I've been to a couple of ladies' days in Georgia, but those are different from retreats), that information really was a big help to me. Thank you, Sister Smith. I also kept Annette Deitz, Melissa Hendricks, and Marsha Estep on the phone a whole lot to answer my many questions and give me advice when I didn't know what to do. So thank you to those three ladies as well.
Annette and her daughter Megan flew up on Tuesday last week to start helping me with the food and other details. I tell ya, I couldn't have done it without them. We had so much work to do, but it was a blast doing it. We made chocolate chip cookies one night, which turned out nearly perfect (and were devoured over the weekend). I made a huge bowl of potato salad and a big thing of baked beans that we served with chicken nuggets Friday night. Ice cream sundaes for dessert!!! Yum!!!! I made two big crock pots of vegetable beef and broccoli cheese soups that we served with sandwiches Saturday for lunch ... with those cookies for dessert. And then we had Fazoli's bring in spaghetti and fettuccine with breadsticks to which we added a big salad for the Saturday night banquet.
Now the dessert for this meal needs a whole paragraph of its own because it was fantastic. Megan, Annette's 14-year old daughter, has been studying cake decorating for some time, so for dessert, she did her very first "wedding" cake. The theme for the retreat was The Heart of the Bride so the wedding cake was perfect for Saturday night. I am so proud of her. She made her own fondant, rolled it out, and covered the cake with it. She did her own roses with frosting and finished it off with strawberries for extra decoration. It turned out beautifully!!!! Got pics. Will post. :-)
We had Sister Jackie Zimmerman there as our evangelist and there's no doubt in my mind she'd been with the Lord about our needs. God moved in such a mighty way at each service and even at our closing session. Everything she spoke on was poignant and meaningful and amazingly in depth. Beautiful sermons. Thank you, Sister Jackie, for allowing God to use you in such an amazing way.
Then Sister Marcia Brooks was one of our teachers and taught a beautiful lesson on making sure our heart was ready ... clean and white without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Her props and the pictures she showed on the overhead were perfect accompaniments and perfectly illustrated her points, which touched our hearts and definitely got us to thinking.
Sister Smith taught the next lesson and it was wonderful as well. She taught us about the rituals that the Hebrew bride went through to prepare for her marriage and related it to the things we must do before our Bridegroom comes to receive us. It too was a beautiful lesson full of lots of wisdom and, I feel, spot on as to what we needed here in this region. Sister Smith also did the music. She chose a few choruses and they were perfect. I know God directed her in that as well because they went right along with the sweet, sweet Spirit that we felt all weekend.
Sister Ammons did our devotions and even in that morning hour, I knew God was stirring hearts and working on us through the things she spoke about. The songs we sang in our devotions were perfect and started our day out just right. My favorite was the one she did Saturday morning when she talked about our hearts being grounded in The Church of God. It was beautiful.
We had lots of food, fun, and fellowship after services each night. We played Pictionary the first night and Balderdash the next. That was so exciting for me because I never get to play games with groups of ladies ... or anybody ... so that was so, so, so fun. :-D
The TAP groups seemed to go really well. I decided to do the groups randomly and believe the Lord worked it out just right. I was in Sister Brenda Albizures's group (pastor from Des Moines) and we had good discussion that helped each of us to get some things out that really helped. And we prayed one for another. It was wonderful. Sister Angie Munoz, I hear, had a neat idea for her group. She made little booklets for each of her ladies that gave a Scripture for each letter of The HEART of the BRIDE and they went through that. Cool idea!!! Then Sister Charlotte Ellison (co-pastor at Menomonie, Wisconsin) did a lot of preaching and singing in her group along with a lot of praying. It was good. Very good!!!!
On Saturday afternoon we played Family Feud. Annette and I, with the help of a few friends, surveyed a total of 50 people to get answers to questions all pertaining to weddings. I then doubled the points so there were 100 points for each question and the game was on!!!! :-) I think the ladies really enjoyed the game as there were plenty of laughs and accusations of cheating from a certain GOW. tee hee. Hey, Sister Smith was just keeping us all honest. :-)
Well, here are the pictures . . .
Sister Smith's class
The Banquet:
The SPECTACLE of the evening ... Megan's beautiful cake:
Look at everybody lining up to get her picture:
The decor:
Dufus me (and Annette HA!!) FORGOT to put out the pretty red linen napkins I rented for the banquet. Spent $4.25 for the napkins and forgot to put them out until everybody was already seated and started to go through the serving line. Grrrrr.... I was so upset with myself. You can't really tell, but the middle of the table had a votive candle in a heart-shaped holder and red rose petals and red heart sequins all around. It was prettier than it looks on this picture:
One night after church we had a lesson on how to do the Sister Smith "twist":
Service:
The whole gang: (Sara and Sister Jackie somehow were able to hide ... not happy about that, ladies ... ;-)
I started working on the retreat back in late January and worked right up until it started at 3 p.m. on Friday. It was a lot of work, but it was fun getting it all together. I enjoy planning events like that so it was a blessing for me to get to do it. Sister Smith helped me greatly by sending documents of information she'd learned and saved over the years of planning herself. Since I'd only been to two ladies' retreat probably eight and nine years ago (I've been to a couple of ladies' days in Georgia, but those are different from retreats), that information really was a big help to me. Thank you, Sister Smith. I also kept Annette Deitz, Melissa Hendricks, and Marsha Estep on the phone a whole lot to answer my many questions and give me advice when I didn't know what to do. So thank you to those three ladies as well.
Annette and her daughter Megan flew up on Tuesday last week to start helping me with the food and other details. I tell ya, I couldn't have done it without them. We had so much work to do, but it was a blast doing it. We made chocolate chip cookies one night, which turned out nearly perfect (and were devoured over the weekend). I made a huge bowl of potato salad and a big thing of baked beans that we served with chicken nuggets Friday night. Ice cream sundaes for dessert!!! Yum!!!! I made two big crock pots of vegetable beef and broccoli cheese soups that we served with sandwiches Saturday for lunch ... with those cookies for dessert. And then we had Fazoli's bring in spaghetti and fettuccine with breadsticks to which we added a big salad for the Saturday night banquet.
Now the dessert for this meal needs a whole paragraph of its own because it was fantastic. Megan, Annette's 14-year old daughter, has been studying cake decorating for some time, so for dessert, she did her very first "wedding" cake. The theme for the retreat was The Heart of the Bride so the wedding cake was perfect for Saturday night. I am so proud of her. She made her own fondant, rolled it out, and covered the cake with it. She did her own roses with frosting and finished it off with strawberries for extra decoration. It turned out beautifully!!!! Got pics. Will post. :-)
We had Sister Jackie Zimmerman there as our evangelist and there's no doubt in my mind she'd been with the Lord about our needs. God moved in such a mighty way at each service and even at our closing session. Everything she spoke on was poignant and meaningful and amazingly in depth. Beautiful sermons. Thank you, Sister Jackie, for allowing God to use you in such an amazing way.
Then Sister Marcia Brooks was one of our teachers and taught a beautiful lesson on making sure our heart was ready ... clean and white without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Her props and the pictures she showed on the overhead were perfect accompaniments and perfectly illustrated her points, which touched our hearts and definitely got us to thinking.
Sister Smith taught the next lesson and it was wonderful as well. She taught us about the rituals that the Hebrew bride went through to prepare for her marriage and related it to the things we must do before our Bridegroom comes to receive us. It too was a beautiful lesson full of lots of wisdom and, I feel, spot on as to what we needed here in this region. Sister Smith also did the music. She chose a few choruses and they were perfect. I know God directed her in that as well because they went right along with the sweet, sweet Spirit that we felt all weekend.
Sister Ammons did our devotions and even in that morning hour, I knew God was stirring hearts and working on us through the things she spoke about. The songs we sang in our devotions were perfect and started our day out just right. My favorite was the one she did Saturday morning when she talked about our hearts being grounded in The Church of God. It was beautiful.
We had lots of food, fun, and fellowship after services each night. We played Pictionary the first night and Balderdash the next. That was so exciting for me because I never get to play games with groups of ladies ... or anybody ... so that was so, so, so fun. :-D
The TAP groups seemed to go really well. I decided to do the groups randomly and believe the Lord worked it out just right. I was in Sister Brenda Albizures's group (pastor from Des Moines) and we had good discussion that helped each of us to get some things out that really helped. And we prayed one for another. It was wonderful. Sister Angie Munoz, I hear, had a neat idea for her group. She made little booklets for each of her ladies that gave a Scripture for each letter of The HEART of the BRIDE and they went through that. Cool idea!!! Then Sister Charlotte Ellison (co-pastor at Menomonie, Wisconsin) did a lot of preaching and singing in her group along with a lot of praying. It was good. Very good!!!!
On Saturday afternoon we played Family Feud. Annette and I, with the help of a few friends, surveyed a total of 50 people to get answers to questions all pertaining to weddings. I then doubled the points so there were 100 points for each question and the game was on!!!! :-) I think the ladies really enjoyed the game as there were plenty of laughs and accusations of cheating from a certain GOW. tee hee. Hey, Sister Smith was just keeping us all honest. :-)
Well, here are the pictures . . .
Sister Marcia's class
Sister Smith's class
The Banquet:
The SPECTACLE of the evening ... Megan's beautiful cake:
Look at everybody lining up to get her picture:
The decor: 
Dufus me (and Annette HA!!) FORGOT to put out the pretty red linen napkins I rented for the banquet. Spent $4.25 for the napkins and forgot to put them out until everybody was already seated and started to go through the serving line. Grrrrr.... I was so upset with myself. You can't really tell, but the middle of the table had a votive candle in a heart-shaped holder and red rose petals and red heart sequins all around. It was prettier than it looks on this picture:
One night after church we had a lesson on how to do the Sister Smith "twist":Service:
The whole gang: (Sara and Sister Jackie somehow were able to hide ... not happy about that, ladies ... ;-) 
7 comments:
So wish I could have been there!! You guys look like you had a wonderful time!! Loved the pictures and hats off to Megan for the beautiful Wedding cake..Tell her with that kind of publicity she might start getting some calls!! LOL!! She better be ready!!
So happy to hear how wonderfully blessed the retreat was. Looks like you all had a great time and the food sounds yummy. Megan did a beautiful job with the cake.
What a thorough and interesting recap of the Retreat. It was worth the drive, for sure! And you did a great job as Director.
It was a wonderful retreat and enjoyed going down memory lane with your post and pictures. Thank you so much for inviting me to come and teach. It was a great blessing for both my daughter and I to be there.
I told her, Marsha. She blushed in true "teeny bopper" fashion. :-)
Thanks, Sister Tammi, Sister Smith, and Sister Marcia for commenting. I just reread my post and realized how dorky it sounds. Repeated a lot, didn't I. *rolling eyes* Did that at a ridiculous hour. May go back and revise sometime. lol
I'm a little late getting here (shock), but I wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading all about your Retreat and seeing pictures. You really put your whole heart into it and it shows. Sounds like a great one!
I am, however, shocked and appalled that my mother was teaching your poor, innocent ladies how to do the Twist at Ladies' Retreat! FOR SHAME!!!
HA! ;-)
:-) Well, they asked for it. lol
Thanks for the compliments. I did really enjoy putting it together. The presence of the sweet Holy Ghost was what made it so special. It was so good.
Post a Comment