Floyd Church Adult Winte Retreat Part 2 - Time to Relax

For our church’s stay at The Springs in 2009, the cost was a mere $98. This is a bargain by any standard. But by the magic of fundraisers (bake sales, etc.), the cost was lowered to a mere $75 per person.

Now just what does one get for that $75. Two nights of sleep in our rooms, or in my case two nights in my “house” (see previous entry). $75 also went toward the five meals we were treated to. Each of these meals is expertly prepared by the very talented chef Meredith and her crew of expert, um, volunteers.

I won’t go into detail about the meals except for one - Saturday afternoon’s pizza meal. I’ve worked with pizza for the last 10 ½ years. I guess that makes me an expert, right? Well, maybe in pizza whose toppings and dough and cheese and sauce are sent to us from other places and is made exactly the same way every single time - the cookie cutter approach. But I do know good pizza when I taste it, and The Springs makes pretty darn good pizza.

Several kinds of pizza were offered to us in both round and square varieties. I found later the round crust was made onsite while the square was already premade. This explains why the cheese and the pepperoni pizzas whose sizable slices I enjoyed were understandably my favorites. The taco pizza was good, though I felt something was lacking about it. What surprised me was the one pizza that impressed more people than anything else - the chicken alfredo pizza. That was actually pretty good with real chicken chunks and a good sauce. I can actually see why my employer stopped offering its own c.a. pizza, because it was rather tame by Springs standards.

Now, no church winter retreat wouldn’t be complete without services wouldn’t it? Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that during an adult retreat held during Valentine’s weekend that the focus of discussion would be on relationships? No, really! Being the only single guy there amongst all the married couples, divorced, and widowed people I should have (and probably did) seen this coming.

First on deck. Saturday’s morning service was led by the youth pastor of the Faith United Church of God in Grand Rapids - Matt Stone. To any Floyd Church alumni that read this, it is that Matt Stone. Matt and his wife Kristin joined us where he led a discussion about “…beginning and new relationships in our lives”. These are the words copied from the program and not my own. Not having seen much of Matt’s growing up, it’s nice to know that the kids we do know now eventually grow up.

I wish I could say how great the evening service was that night led by church member Kevin Kindy. I’d be totally lying to you because I wasn’t there. I decided to take temporary leave after dinner to take care of a few things at home, such as the feeding of the cat.

This leads to the rest of the day. Ah yeah! That original plan was to get some rest and take it easy. Easily done. While Friday for me was working with the craziness of the real world, Saturday was simply R&R for want of a better term. During the afternoon free time, I checked in with what was happening around the building and was simply starting to tire of it. Did I mention earlier that I wasn’t feeling well headed into the weekend? I decided it was best to do my own thing, you know the photography thing, a little reading and a few games on my own.

Come to think about it, that’s how the evening went after I returned to camp. Activities were split between watching the movie “Fireproof” and the annual carpet ball tournament. Me, well I was simply content in doing my own thing such as reading in bed (a rather dangerous activity).

What can be better than this?