Retreat!!!

Last Friday & Saturday, October 23 & 24, was our Relief Society Presidency Retreat. This is the 3rd year we have had a Retreat. The 1st was held 4 years ago by the previous stake Relief Society presidency. These are wonderful weekends that take lots of work to prepare and just fill you up spiritually as well as have lots of fun in them. Pat Woods opens her home to us, Ray leaves for the time we are there (bless his heart!) and we have a wonderful time in a home environment. We tried to find camouflage shirts for our presidency to wear. We didn't find those so we decided to each wear a color that would represent out calling in Relief Society. Mine was purple for the presidents, Lisa was blue for the counselors covering Sunday meetings, Laura was green for the counselors covering other Relief Society meetings, and Barbara was pink for the secretaries. Lisa surprised us by giving us all aprons before the sisters got there in the color of our t-shirts. This year our theme was 'Back to Basics' and we focused on the 6 objectives of Relief Society. We sent out invitations with a pink camouflage cover. Then as the sisters enter Pat's home they were each given a dog tag, a power bar (granola bar with a pink camouflage wrapper) and a survival book. The survival book had a pink camouflage cover and contained the cadence, the key survival tips for each member of the presidency, the 6 objectives of Relief Society with room on the page for notes as we covered that objective and the 2 hymns we would sing during the Retreat. The ladies all gathered about 6pm and we started by just mingling together. Then we asked them to all find a seat in Pat's living room and we started off with our Cadence that Lisa (my 1st counselor) wrote. What a sight we must have been as Lisa, Laura, Barbara and myself marched in going "left, left, left, right, left". Then while marching in place we said our cadence. Lisa wrote this cadence. We say 2 complete verses, then I yelled "Sound Off" and Lisa, Laura and Barbara yelled "Build Faith", then I yelled "Sound Off" and Lisa, Laura and Barbara yelled, "With Works". The middle part of the cadence had each of us stepping forward as the next one said our name and something about our role in Relief Society in cadence rhythm. Then we did the Sound Off portion again. We finished with 2 more verses about Relief Society followed by the final Sound Off portion. It brought smiles to the sisters faces and set a great mood for our weekend. I gave a little talk to set the stage about our theme and purpose for the weekend and to explain our goal of covering the 6 objectives to bring us 'Back to the Basics' of Relief Society. We tried to emphasize the importance of foregoing the frivolous for the more important things and making productive use of the valuable time of each Relief Society sister. Then Laura did a wonderful job of giving an object lesson using vegetables to set the stage for our weekend. We followed this by having dinner of vegetable soup and crackers and little peanut butter sandwiches. After dinner our priesthood leaders spoke to us about each sister receiving the blessings of the priesthood. This is the 6th objective. Jaime Kumar is our high councilor and he spoke first. Then Pres. Bob Bylund spoke. He brought his sweet wife, Pam, with him. Pam was a Relief Society president 3 years ago and it was great to have her back with us for a bit. Pat Thompson joined us for the weekend. She shared a brief message about preparedness at home and ideas for your car. Then we took time to cover the changes in the Relief Society program as outlined in Sis. Julie Beck's talk. I covered this portion of the program with the sisters. We gave each sister a copy of Sis. Beck's talk for their notebooks. We also gave each of them the list of points made in Sis. Beck's talk that were printed in the Church News. I made a little booklet of the lds.org website pages under Serving in Relief Society, Sunday Meetings and Other Relief Society Meetings. We passed those among the sisters so they could see the growing number of resources available to them to know how to implement this change in Relief Society. Then Barbara led us in a game of "Who Am I?" She was covering the 2nd objective regarding the divine worth of each sister. Barbara passed out 20 cards with information about a woman in the scriptures or one of the previous General Relief Society Presidents. After someone read the card, we were to guess who the person was. When we got through all 20 women, Barbara played a beautiful song sung by a little child. It was a really touching portion of the evening. It was time for Laura to lead us in a game to emphasize objective #4 regarding strengthening families. Laura had the sisters brainstorm some of the things in today's world that tear down and/or destroy families. Then she brought out slingshots and had sisters shoot little balls at posters that had pictures of these things we named that destroy families. It was great fun, got the sisters moving and thinking. We sang "We Are All Enlisted" for a closing hymn. The evening was not over but it gave an opportunity for our priesthood leaders and those sisters who needed to return to their families an opportunity to leave. The rest of us stayed and made some gift bags with Phyllis Beaman. Bless her sweet heart she has come every year with a scrapping idea we could use to help us with our Relief Society callings. These little bags were great fun to make and decorate. We had a few sisters that did hot wax treatments. We had some time for some sisters to just visit with each other and the stake leaders. We ended our day by playing Left, Right, Center. (I think I might try and find this game for Thanksgiving when the kids are all here.) About 4am we headed to bed. When I curled up in bed I found a plastic skull under my pillow! At first I thought someone had placed a mint under my pillow and I was so thinking how thoughtful that was. Then I realized it was a plastic skull and I got up to question Lisa and Laura. They were placing a thing over the door facing that was full of fun yarn with spiders and things in it. I headed back to bed and when I was adjusting my pillow I found several more skulls in the pillow case. Then Lisa and Laura came in because they had expected screaming or at minimum more reaction than they were getting. I stretched out my foot to sit up and my foot touched something that felt cold and funny. I managed to pull it out to find a big old soft plastic fly!! Ah, but I wasn't through yet. A little further under the covers we managed to find a rat!! We all chuckled at their antics and finally drifted off to sleep about 4:30am. My phone alarm went off at 7am. I dressed and brushed my teeth and then proceeded to be sure all others were waking up. At 7:30am Lisa led us in calisthetics. She was emphasizing the 1st objective about building faith in Jesus Christ. She did a great job of having us do little exercises that represented how be build faith. For example, we did the rocking chair exercise with our scriptures. We would bend over, pick up our scripture, bend our knees while putting our hands and the scriptures in front of us, then stand and hold our scriptures like we were reading them, then bend over and repeat the process. As we continued to do each exercise Lisa would tell us what it represented, share a scripture that supported that concept. It was a great way to wake up and start our day. Our priesthood was back to feed us breakfast at 8:15am. Tom Walker helped Jaime Kumar by fixing us omelettes to order with fresh fruit and muffins and donuts. It was great fun to visit and eat this delicious breakfast together. To continue with our training, I covered objective #3 about exercising charity and nurturing those in need and objective #5 about serving and supporting each sister by focusing on visiting teaching. I used the obstacle courses that are part of basic training. There is a conditioning obstacle course that is run against the clock and everyone must pass. It is down in the trenches and very hard. I compared this to doing the minimum that one has to do to be a visiting teacher. The other obstacle course is the confidence course. It is run at your own pace and has obstacles that vary from easy to very difficult. Some of these obstacles are high in the air. For these you have a safety net. I talked about this type of course being visiting teaching done through love and caring and not as a race to get 1 visit finished by the end of each month. I had some pictures of basic training obstacle courses to show of each of these kinds of courses. Then we separated the sisters by their wards and had each of the wards write a cadence for their ward. After writing their cadence we had every one stand and march in place while we all did the 1st verses of the stake Relief Society cadence, then each ward in turn read their cadence and we ended with all of us reading the end of the stake Relief Society cadence. It was great fun and the sisters wrote really cute and meaningful cadences. Laura Carter then did a bit of training about strengthening presidencies. She sent a survey to the presidencies before Retreat and used the answers from this survery plus the answers we received about presidency meetings taken during ward conferences this year to make a Family Feud type game. It was good to see what answers were given the most. Laura finished by reading some of the answers without sharing names or wards that were very tender. While Laura was doing this activity/object lesson training, we had the sisters make 'Pitter Fudge'. I've shared that in a previous blog. It was a fun activity and was to go in their lunch bags as their dessert. We invited Lyndell Gordon to spend the Retreat with us. Her calling in the stake is as Adoption Specialist working with LDS Family Services. She talked about her experiences at the annual training with LDS Family Services which she and Lisa Adams attended. Then she read to us from the book titled "For the Love of a Child". The two portions she read covered an adoption from the perspective of the birth mother and from the perspective of the adoptive parents. It was so moving we just really wanted to sit quietly for a while. It was all tied into our all being adopted into the fold of Christ and as children of Israel and that adoption is the Lord's way. We concluded our morning with a question and answer session. While this was going on Lisa, Laura and Barbara prepared sack lunches for the sisters to eat at Pat's home or to take with them as they headed back home to their families. This was a wonderful Retreat. We just love to be with these ladies who serve so diligently and well in their wards. It is good to have time to learn, to visit with each other, to share ideas and questions, and to fill our cups a bit so that we can serve faithfully.