So thankfully my weekend after the Superbowl was pretty awesome and free from my team getting beaten by cheeseheads. My work, Christian Challenge, had a woman's retreat all day Saturday with the option of having the girls sleep over at some of the staff women's places. We called it "It's a Girl Thing" and the theme was all about relationships, specifically woman friendships. Myself and 2 of the other staff women ran around all day Friday like we were chickens with our heads cut off getting everything we needed and cleaning and shopping and sweeping and oh my goodness it was crazy.
Saturday started at 10am for the girls and we were there at 8am to help with all the last minute stuff. Once all the girls arrived we had brunch with delicious egg & sausage casserole, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad and juice!! There were about 30 of us total, including a few of our alums we asked to stop by. Once we were all finished our first of two speakers got there. We asked Mary Ross, a Challenge alum, to share about what friendship is to her and how God has designed it from His Word. She graduated in 2007 and is finishing up her last year at UCLA law school (yes, she's at UCLA but she's a Trojan at heart :) and Mary hit the ball out of the park! She was a very good speaker, had a lot of good examples from her own life and challenged the girls to really take the time to initiate friendships with their peers in college because the old adage is true - once you graduate it's a whole lot harder to make friends!
She talked about how a friend is someone you can laugh with, cry with and wait with. She said that our culture is of the mind to just "have a lot of friends!!" but how true friends are hard to come by and it's worth it to just have a few of those heart friends to live life with. The thing I liked the most was when she said that we really only have 2 kinds of relationships that we can control - our relationship with God and our relationships with friends. We can't control the romantic relationships but we can control the other two! And how those 2 kinds of relationships FAR outlive other tangibles in our lives like what kind of job we have, the kind of house we live in, etc.
She talked about John 15:12-15 where Jesus calls the disciples His friends, and how He has called you and me His friends, how He has invited us into friendship with Him, the Creator of the universe!! Jesus chose to get involved in our lives and we need to choose the same with the relationships that He has given us now.
Then after Mary spoke we decoupaged picture frames!! It was so super much fun and I definitely want to do it again in the future!!
so pretty right? well, I was pleased with it, it came out a lot better than I thought!! We laid out all the frames and it was really cool to see all the different styles of the girls come out in how they decorated their frames!
Then we mingled some more, snacked on veggies, pita chips and hummus, then heard from our second speaker, Stacey Klepzig. She graduated in the early 90's and now has 2 kids and we wanted 2 different ages and stages of our speakers so that the girls could see people putting God's Word into action a few years removed from college and then decades later too! She was fantastic and brought props too! She said that God's design for us as we relate is to give our lives away and ask Him for His heart for people. She talked about some of the obstacles we face in doing that (our lack of prayer, "not enough time," lack of forgiveness, faulty concept of God and/or people among others) and the blessings we get when we decide to open ourselves up to people. It certainly gave me a lot to think about! Then we had mini discussions with the other alumni who were there and it was great to see the girls opening up with each other!! :)
Then more mingling and then it was time for dinner! We all made it together - pork, chicken and veggie kababs, rice pilaf (I was the leader of that team seeing as how I think I was the only one who had ever had it!!) and fatoosh salad!! It was stinkin' delicious and fun to kick back with the girls!!
Then some of the girls left early and we also had fruit salsa and tortilla chips that we made which were dusted with cinnamon sugar - ridiculously good!! Then we made fun headbands or hair clips, and one of our girls brought henna so we got tattoos :)
The flower is mine and the other is Jessyka, one of our freshmen :)
Melinda even got one!! A heart with a flag inside waving the name "Neil" - so cute and hilarious!!!
We left Melinda's place at 10:30pm, then slept and my roomie Erin and I had breakfast with Melinda and the girls who slept over at her place - waffles!! It was a crazy fun weekend but I am also glad to have a night off tonight and recouperate!!
Hope you're having a great Valentine's Day!!!
