Youth Retreat 2014 - About the Things We Should Say More Often

On January 24th, 2014, the annual Winter Retreat began at Camp Edgewood. To get there we had to drive roughly 2 hours from Toronto to Eden Mills, near Guelph, Ontario, through blowing snow which definitely made for some treacherous driving, but the weekend was definitely worth it. For all of us youth, it was really just a fun, laid back experience to spend time with our friends that we haven’t seen since the summer camp. But more importantly, we had the opportunity to learn and strengthen our ever growing connection with God.

The theme of the weekend was 20 Things That We Should Say More Often. Through this theme, and during the course of the weekend, there were many opportunities to understand the value of being kind to one another, and learn some of the best ways to do that.

With the guidance of our Pastors, we read Bible verses about love and compassion, and learned the difference between things that we think we love, versus what we really do love like our families. We wrote kind messages to one another on sticky notes that we stuck to each other’s backs, only to rip them off a few seconds later to see what our friends had said about us. In the evenings, we had worship, where we had the opportunity to sing some of our favourite camp songs and learn more about ourselves and one another.

On Saturday, we had some time to play outside in the snow. Despite the frigid temperatures, we had a blast! It was definitely a far cry from the two centimeters of snow that we had back in Toronto. We made snow angels and had snowball fights all afternoon, only to go back into the mess hall to warm up.

The Winter Retreat was an opportunity for us all to make new friends, reunite with old ones, learn about God and just have a wonderful time. It is definitely needless to say that the experiences that we have all gained from that weekend will last a life time.

-Emily W.