MS Dolfin Cabin: Part 4

This is the last in our four part series on the happenings of our Middle School retreat July 24th-26th. Checkout the previous posts below to learn even more. For you visual types there is a photo gallery of the trip to the right with over 100 pics of our exciting weekend. Enjoy.

Sunday Morning
Well, we finally tired the students out so Sunday morning actually started somewhat according to plan. After breakfast our students split into their small groups to discuss the material from the Saturday night worship session. After that we all headed into the worship center for our final worship time together.

We opened worship with our high schooler "performing" Let's see How Far We've Come with Guitar Hero guitars and fairly crazy costumes. If I had a dollar for every laugh that group got this weekend I'd be doing pretty good. The theme for our third worship time was Made to be Salt and Light. The high schoolers did two "dramas" for us, entitled Voices of Need. The first one focused on the physical needs so many people have and the great amount of poverty that exists throughout our world. Each student read the real words of someone in the world suffer from poverty, poor health conditions, war, famine, etc. The second drama focused on spiritual needs. Each high schooler read the real story of a teen in our country struggling without Christ in their life, or simply struggling with their faith. The message then focused on what it means to be salt and light, which Jesus tells us we're meant to be. Salt makes things better, which we all know from how often we put it on foods or choose salted peanuts, chips, etc. over the non-salted version. The point is that God wants us to make this world, with his hunger, poverty, poor health, wars, violence, etc. a better place. God wants us to be part of the solution. God also wants us to be light. Light makes even the darkest and scariest spaces seem not so bad, because it shows the way. In the same way we are supposed to be a light shining people towards God. This happens not only when we tell someone about God, but also when we live our life according to God's word, loving everyone we encounter as we love ourselves.
Worship 3 Set-list:
Let's See How Far We've Come: Matchbox 20
Take It All: Hillsong United
Automatic: Stellar Kart
The Stand: Hillsong United
With Everything: Hillsong United
Shine: Fee

After worship our students headed for their final small groups. The session was focused on serving others with a sense of humility. Students looked at the story of Jesus humbling himself by washing the disciples feet, and then headed into the worship center for our own footwashing experience. We treated this as a commissioning to head back home and meet the needs of others with the love of Christ, being God's salt and light. After a time of prayer everyone headed to lunch and their lake activities. By this second day on the lake tubing slowly turns into scenes from Ben-Hur, with students jumping onto other's tubes, kicking them off, etc. Fun to watch, but I was glad not to be in there. They sure had a blast out there though.

Finally, following a beautiful day on the lake it was time to clean-up and head home. What a blessing it is that Todd and Laura allow us to use this amazing place every year. It's really like having our own private retreat center, and we are all EXTREMELY thankful. Thanks also to all of our leaders and high schoolers for giving their time to make this a successful weekend. It takes a ton of work over several months, but it's so worth it when you see the student's passionately worshiping, getting into the word, getting the points of messages, and loving each other. Thanks again to everyone for a great retreat.