Completely Submerged for the Lord

By: Kristen Groff

Our Summer Retreat has come and gone very quickly. It seems that it was over before it even started! But, we have truly laughed very hard, cried on each other's shoulders, and experienced the quiet whisper of God in our hearts!
Morgan and I were very nervous going into this retreat because two weeks before, we felt as though we needed to completely switch up what we were planning to teach on. Our original theme was "Got Faith?" and we were excited to be able to begin our 2nd year as a group by beginning to build that firm faith foundation but we felt as though we were trying to force something that just wasn't there.We began to really pray about it and we continually asked the Lord to guide us in what we were doing. Although in the backs of our minds we knew that time was running out and that we were on a deadline, we ultimatly felt peace and comfort about the situation. We didn't spend much time planning small details, instead we tried to focus more on the big picture kind of stuff. We continued to pray and trust that God would have His way and whatever happened would be all for His Glory!
The day of the retreat arrived and we headed off to church together as a group. Morgan and I prayed together by ourselves before we left and Corby, our youth pastor, did for the entire group. We believed that God had the opportunity to do something great over the next couple of days and we were going to try our hardest not to get in the way of that. We had four sessions planned, One: "Born to Embrace" Two: "The Fence Sitter" Three: "Two Chains & a Rock" Four: "Following Faithful". Morgan led the first two and I led the second two.
We began our sessions and experienced certain feelings that we (as leaders) had never felt before. We learned that this retreat was going to be a little difficult in the fact that some of the key points we felt that God was leading us to lead were very uncomfortable. As a result of that, we broke down the first night, feeling as though everything was falling apart and that nothing was going go the way WE wanted. Soon enough though, we were back on track and focused on the Lord again. "It is what it is" was our motto!
We really challenged the girls to get off the fence and leave the ways of this world behind. We challenged them to dig deep into the hard stuff that we don't really want to face and to chase after the Lord at full speed! We truly believe that God has done something in each of our hearts after this retreat.
Morgan and I tried to have some one on one time with each girl, but since our whole group is so friendly and often acts like we are a family, it was difficult to catch girls by themselves but we did get to a couple times! The conversations we had were great and we loved having the opportunity to love and pray for the girls!
Morgan and I also made sure that we had time just together. We used this time to prepare and pray for the upcoming sessions and to discuss how we felt things were going and what we felt we needed to change or do differently. We both have truly learned that pouring out your heart for something you love and for something that you feel the Lord has called you to do is very very very exhausting! But we loved every moment of it... and even forced down coffee to keep us awake a energized! We know that as leaders we need to be serious and mature but we also need to be able to have a blast and act crazy and insane! God has truly blessed us with the gift of patience over these past couple of days our hearts are changed!
We are very much looking forward to the upcoming year together as a girls group! We believe that God has some very exciting and life changing things hidden up His sleeve and we can't wait for Him to reveal what that is! It is what it is and we believe that God will have his way!