Bear Awakening

This weekend I participated in a student-led retreat called Awakening. There are many "secrets" that you don't get to know of until you've been a retreater on the weekend, but I'll try to give you as much info as I can! There are different staffs you can be on if you've been on the retreat before. (I had not been a retreater, but I had been on a very similiar retreat called SEARCH and therefore knew all the secrets... so I was a staff member.) One staff is the leadership team in charge of all the logistics. They are chosen by Father and the 2 students who are the main leaders. There are also staffs that are the cooks for the weekend, the small group leaders, the technologically savvy people, the musical people, and last, but not least, the energetic people who make everything fun and do anything they are asked - that was me.  I was what we called a Go-For. Each staff and table had a saint as there patron and became the "theme" for that group for the weekend. Our saint was Martha (as in Mary and Martha) since she was a servant. We wanted to have the joy and heart of servants for the weekend. Therefore, our costumes (yes, we got to wear costumes!) were that of waitresses/waiters. The overall theme for the weekend was Lost and Found. Some of the other things included talks/testimonies by our students about things like sin, confession, love, hope, being a Christian in the midst of the world... and the one I got to give: being a woman of God! Each talk has a little activity and discussion time for the small groups - which I won't share with you here. It was fun and hopefully helped the retreaters see the importance and joy of having a relationship with Jesus and helping them begin to form one! Yay, Jesus!!!