Junior & Senior Retreat
- Taige H. -
The Klesis Juniors and Seniors, along with our friends from Koinonia, A2F, and Make New had a thrilling three-day weekend retreat at Sierra Lodge, with a lot of in-tents activities and messages. It was definitely jam-packed with over 200 students and staff having the opportunity to both have fun and learn more about God’s Word.
We arrived on pretty late on Friday and had some time to hang out before hitting the hay. Saturday, we hit off the retreat by meeting at the newly built Sierra Lodge amphitheater. There, we sang a few hymns to worship Him, and learned about the process of solitude, to community, to ministry. Even Jesus went through this progression, as he found time alone with God, to building relationships with his disciples, to reaching out to the people of Israel.
Pastor Ed then gave a message on Genesis 1-3. Like how the life in the world was made from nothingness and void, we were saved from our own nothingness and void into a life of abundance of life.
Afterwards, we had a real opportunity for fellow-SHIP when he loaded up some of the Sierra Lodge kayaks and drove to a nearby lake to go kayaking! The water was cold and crystal clear, perfect for fishing, boating, and dunking our friends!
That night, after some hearty dinner, we got to hear some testimonies from our leaders and their experiences during their junior and senior years. From rejecting offers from Stanford and Harvard graduate schools, to giving up torrenting (downloading illegal files), the staff blessed us with these testimonies of both with their walks with God and wisdom gained.
We joined the sophomores at Sky Mountain (no, it’s nothing like Sky High) for Sunday Worship service. The theme of that service was “being rich toward God”, rather than being rich toward the world and our own desires. We went through plenty of parables, the rich fool, the rich man and Lazarus, just to name a few, that showed that God’s wisdom should indeed be inse-parable from us!
Then, it was time to showcase the ability of each ministry group! After an hour’s preparation, performed an “artistic representation” of what it means to be rich toward God. Whether it be Hillsong Old and Obligated, or weird fruit rituals (ask the Klesis seniors..) we all had a blast listening to the “creativity” of our fellow juniors and seniors.
On Monday, we had a message on the importance of daily repentance, of coming before God and accepting his work in our hearts for the change that is accepted by His spirit. It was a great message to leave off on, and after doing some respective tidying up for the lodge, we went on our way back to Berkeley, reenergized for a new semester!