As sons and daughters of the King, Christians know that they should be praying, reading their bible, spending time with their father and memorizing His Word. But so often it is done out of duty or mere habit. Their beliefs are shallow and their relationship with God is just about nonexistent. It is an increasing problem among Christians today.
On March 29 & 30, We, Dana and I (Caitlin), had a retreat for the young ladies in our homeschool group. We called it "From the Heart." Our theme verse was Ephesians 6:6, "Not with eyeservice as menpleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart."
It was our goal for each of the girls to draw closer to the Lord and develop a deeper relationship with Him through prayer and memorization of God's Word. We wanted the girls to do this from their heart and not out of duty or habit. Dana spoke on 'Your relationship with God through prayer' and I on 'Memorization of the Word.'
The ages were 10-18, so it was somewhat difficult to find a happy medium where the younger ones could understand the teaching that we had originally planned for older girls. But the Lord freely bestowed upon us His amazing grace, and gave us the wisdom that we needed.
Most of the pictures I took are of the games, I noticed that the flash was distracting the girls, so I discontinued taking pictures until after the sessions (Our space was limited and in order to get pictures of the girls I had to walk in front of them). Sorry for the blurry pictures, but the church has the worst lighting and my lens was giving me trouble. Anyway, here are the pictures of our activities!
Game #1
The Bible Name Game! I overheard this girl (her back is pictured above) asking "Do I have anything to do with food?" Another girl answered, "Well, um, sort of....well, actually yes."
Game #2 My favorite
Can you guess our game?
Don't the girls look excited!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!
Spam Creations!!!
The girls were hilarious. I think only four girls actually touched it with their hands-the rest used knives and spoons.
And by the way, yes, it did stink Really, Really bad!
Dana and I judged them after they finished. The end results~
Group one: a log cabin
Group two: Stone hedge, a dog, a horse head/dolphin thing and well, spam creations
Group three: a train on the tracks with cinder and rocks with trees for scenery and flowers (on another plate).
We took in to consideration the creativity of the spam creations and came to the conclusion that the winner was...
Team three!
Next it was time for teaching!
My beautiful sister Dana speaking on "Your relationship with God through prayer"
Here she is demonstrating a dutiful prayer-done out of duty and not from the heart
We typed out notes for the girls. They had to fill in selected areas.
And that above which you do not see is a picture of me! 
Due to the calamity of my camera refusing to focus in the hands of an inexperienced Canon operator, I am not shown. (okay, fine, I didn't like the pictures of myself with goofy faces because I was talking, so I made up the mostly true story) 
Game #3 Also my favorite!
A Bear Hunt!!!
I saw a bear over there, did you see a bear over there?!
...Well, I saw a bear down here!
Hand on Activity
Beaded Bracelets!
We gave each girl a heart for her bracelet to remember the message of the retreat.
We had several different hearts.
I think that the girls enjoyed this activity the best!
Skits!!!
We gave the girls character qualities and they had to make a skit about that quality. Very entertaining!
My beautiful sister Gianna. She is in a skit on loyalty.
Their skit was about a dog, well, actually it was about 17 dogs. But one girl was the main dog.
This one was on diligence, quite comical. They had "Lot's Diner", named after the Bible Name game with Lot's wife!
And my computer is refusing to post the last two pictures. Waaaaaaaa.
Their skit was on obedience and was really good.
We were blessed to be able to spend time with the girls and share what the Lord had placed upon our hearts!
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