Crunch Time!!! It's Great!

Hello! It’s Shayla from Team Five-Alive. You know last week in my blog, when I said it was crunch time? Well, this week was definitely crazy! Lets see…on Sunday we had our lifenight called ‘Give it Away Now’. On Tuesday we had Glass Alabaster and Real Men. Wednesday and Thursday we had all day Retreats. Thursday night we also had edge. Then coming up, we have an Edge Retreat and Crew sleepover Saturday to Sunday.

Sunday’s Lifenight was a blast. It was the one that we were collecting all the clothes for. The whole night was on the things that get in our way of our relation ship with God. There are many things that we can take out of our life to help us focus more on Him. With the clothing we had an activity where we weighed all the clothing. To our surprise, the total weight was around 1,100 pounds!!! All of this clothing that the whole community helped us acquire will go to the St. Vincent De Paul charity in Ottawa. Now that’s a lot of clothing!

Tuesday was the Real Men and Glass Alabaster. These are groups for the young men and women where they learn about purity and chastity, and how to be men and women of God. From what I heard from the men, it went really well for them (they didn’t release any information on what went on during their night). So, to be just like them, I’ll just say that women had a blast in Glass Alabaster. They were both socials, so we just had fun filled nights.

Wednesday and Thursday were the confirmation retreats. They were both really good groups of young teens. Both with their own forms of energy, and all super excited to be at the retreat. With some age groups it’s hard to tell what they would like and what they wouldn’t like. They were grade 7’s, during that time in their life where they’re either ‘too cool’ or full of energy and don’t’ care what others think. Lets just say both groups surprised me. I thought there were going ot be a lot of ‘too cool’ teens, but the game of Pull Up at the beginning of both retreats proved me wrong. Yes, there were a few who didn’t want to participate, but for the majority, they were flying across that circle doing their dance moves. Some of them I thought were never going to get out because they were having such a blast. Another part of the retreat that I absolutely loved were my small groups. Because of the weird boy to girl ratio in Perth and Smiths Falls, I ended up having not one, but two boys small groups. Was that ever quite the experience. I’ll just say that they’re more unpredictable than girls. Girls tend to be talkative with each other or talkative with you. I had no idea what to expect with boys. The first group I had was extremely energized, and they liked talking about their injuries, but they were so energized that I had to bribe them with chocolate to keep calm. They were really good though during prayer ministry. I was really proud of them. My second group was quite the opposite. They were extremely calm, and talkative, but it was a talkative where each person took a turn talking and listening to each other. They were so efficient at answering all the questions I had for them that it got to the point that I didn’t know what to do with our extra small group time…so I rewarded them with playing cards. That was fun. Once again, I was also blown away by their reverence during prayer ministry. The retreats went so well that I wish we could do more (picture to the left is Rebecca being prayed over before her Confirmation talk).

So, that was our busy week so far. It’s not over though because we have a retreat from Saturday to Sunday. From what I’ve seen the Edgers look extremely excited.

Well, until next week. God Bless you all!

Shayla Doucette
Team 5