Presby Retreat 2008

This past weekend thirty of us Presbyterian students headed up the mountains, out of LA, to the beautiful town of Big Bear for a relaxing time of fellowship, music, games, food, out door walks, naps, and teaching on the topic of discernment by Dave Pierson, a presbyterian pastor from San Diego. Having stayed here for spring break, I was desperate to get out of the city, so it was wonderful to be away! Here are the photos from the last couple days. Sophie & I leave tomorrow morning for Houston to serve on the staff of Houston Presbyterian Cursillo #50 this coming weekend (Thurs-Sunday) and will be back in LA Monday, so stay tuned next week for stories/photos from Cursillo :o)

Attempting to wake up Saturday morning--me, Chuck, Dave and TeraChuck and IStacey, Tammy & Jessica enjoying the beautiful day!Dave and Tera found the playground equipment by the lakeSo did Pocket!Apparently Pocket was cold, so Chuck decided to turn her into a "hot pocket"Saturday afternoon Tera, Dave, Chuck, Karl and I played Ticket to Ride because it's just an amazing game :) Dave won but I had the best game I've ever had so I was pretty excited!free time = nap time for seminary students!Stacey, Laura, Pocket and DaveMy favorite part of the retreat is always the jam session that inevitably happens on Saturday afternoon. We have SO many who are so talented with music and play for hours for anyone who wants to listen or join in! Here is Laura...and the group has grown! we have now moved into old VBS songs...here are the hand motions for "deep and wide"the beautiful big bear lakeone group went into town for a bit of free timeMegan and Jenn enjoying the huge caramel applesmmmm...Alan looks happy!We had 4 Daves on the weekend--here is Dave to the 4thTera and JennTamara needed to work but wanted to be outside, so she set up her own little camp.Jenn and ChristinaDave putting away dishes. Or at least that was what he was supposed to be doing!Chuck wanted a nap. I wanted to eat a cookie. Ryan and Alethia, our expert brownie makers baked for us both nightsSarah, Jenn and AlethiaDave Pierson, our speaker, was Ryan's and Jean's youth pastor from Alaska while they were growing up. Dave now serves a congregation in San Diego and was gracious enough to give up his weekend to come share with us. He finally got to meet Ryan's wife, Alethia also!my random attempt at an artistic/creative shotthe lunch stuff went out on Sunday and it was a feeding frenzy! Saturday night we played Trivial Pursuit pop-culture edition--our team somehow became known as "Team Dave" because Dave K was the only one who knew the answers to anything for awhile...except my random contribution (wild guess that happened to be right...) that Deepak Chopra used to specialize in endocrinology before becoming a gu-ru of natural medicine. My team was going to guess brain surgery or something and I convinced them it had to be something more related to the glands and lymph nodes if he transitioned to natural healing. So I convinced them to go with endocrinology and it happened to be right :) Gotta love having two nurses for parents! However, we lost to Team Lava in a sudden death round because their final question was "what kind of fish was Nemo?" Seriously. We get to guess endocrinology and they get to answer questions about Nemo...