Every year, the high school students pack up and head to the Alps for the weekend for a retreat. The Chaplain's department works extremely hard to plan this weekend and invite a speaker and worship team to lead our sessions.
To begin our weekend, students can choose to leave early Friday morning if they would like to ski or sled in the Alps. I get up early and leave with the early bus so I can join in the skiing! :) The rest of the student body leave around noon. This year, I enjoyed skiing with four other ladies. The weather was beautiful and we found some nice powder to ski down! At one point, we were skiing down with two students towards the end of the day. We talked about getting in another run in before the lifts closed and the students opted to head down early. They were tired! We kept going! Something wrong with this picture? Should not teenagers have more energy?!
Here is a picture of us heading up the mountain in the gondola!
After dinner on Friday evening, we begin our first session at 7 pm with an activity. Each year, the Chaplains pair up small groups, usually a girl's small group and a guy's small group, to plan their activity together. In the past, students had to come up with a commercial using certain props among other creative ideas. This year, we were to come up with a 30 second pose from a movie, book, play, or other source with the last 5 seconds of action. Our speaker and worship team decide who wins first, second, and third place based on creativity among other stipulations. Students are given an hour to plan their pose and practice. They will perform either Friday night, Saturday morning, or Saturday night with the winners being announced on Sunday morning. Performances were very creative and fun including model poses, a day at BFA, Star Wars, wrestling, classroom scene, and more.
Over the weekend, we have four different sessions beginning on Friday evening. We begin our sessions with activity presentations, announcements, worship, then a message from our speaker. This year, he spoke on different parables from Matthew 13 and challenged our students to recognize Christ's faithfulness in our lives and what it means to follow Christ with our whole lives. Mark, our speaker, graduated from BFA while his family was serving a community in Italy. Today, he and his family are serving the same community in Italy. Italy has a lot of prostitution and slavery is rampant. This country could use a lot of prayer!
Mark recounted several stories from his time in the dorms and at BFA which we all very much enjoyed! When he first came to BFA, learning English was a struggle. Through dedication and amazing teachers, he began to flourish in academics and in his spiritual life. He spent a lot of time with the students, getting to know their stories.
After the session on Saturday morning, the students have several hours of free time, all afternoon! They can go hiking, play the dodgeball tournament in the gym, go ice skating in town, play games, hang with friends, walk into town and buy some Alpine kase (Okay, that's was for me!). A time to be active or not until dinner and our evening session. On Sunday morning, we have our last session, then lunch before we pack up the buses to leave. We usually get back to Kandern around 4:30 in the afternoon, tired but happy!
After each session, small groups meet up and discuss questions given to the leaders ahead of time. I really enjoyed time spent with my girls. Since students have a choice to be a part of a small group at the beginning of the year, not all choose to join. This means during HS retreat, some groups get an extra student for the weekend. I usually have four girls, but had five for the weekend. I love that my girls feel comfortable to have deep discussions and even share their struggles.This is huge and usually does not happen the first year! This is my first year with a new group of girls as my group from last year have graduated and are now in their freshmen year in college. Each group is so different! All of these girls are amazing and I am so blessed to be a part of their lives! Below, are a few pictures of our small group from last weekend!
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