When we're not juggling and performing illusions, my wife and I are both teachers. Being the middle school teacher at a Christian school, a two day middle school retreat is a normal part of my year. This year was unique in that our daughter Rose is in my class, so she got to come on the trip. Furthermore, my wife, Sue, took a couple of personal days so she could be one of the parent chaperones. It was so nice to have my family with me this year. Besides Rose and Sue, there were 21 other 12, 13 and 14 year olds and three other chaperones.
The retreat center, which is in Standish, Maine, belongs to the family of one of my co-workers and has been in his family for decades. It is a beautiful lodge in the woods with its own pond and many acres of land. The fully stocked kitchen makes it so convenient. Students were already broken into four work teams for when they go out with their own juggling presentation; LOL. As work teams on this retreat, the kids themselves did the cooking, clean up, loading and unloading, etc. Of course, they had adult supervision, but these chores themselves are great for team building. When I first started going on these retreats, the adults did all the work serving the kids. Truthfully, though, the last thing any young person needs is to a reason to think they exist to be served by others. So now, we work side by side.
The two days were tremendous fun, as the center has ping pong, pool, foosball, shuffleboard, basketball and more. We brought the LOL juggling props, and I spent a lot of time juggling with some of the kids. I spent a good bit of time teaching Anna to pass. Corbin started to develop her own tricks with ball juggling, Meira mastered the balance board, and many other kids pushed the limits of their ability.
The school's principal, Roy, has a tradition of taking any interested kids for an early morning swim on the second day of the retreat. This year five students (all girls) joined him at 6:30 AM to go jump in the pond. The air temperature was 18 degrees! Of course, Rose was in the middle of this adventure, and has been boasting ever since that she went in the deepest and stayed in the longest. Her mother and I slept through all this.
Of course, there's more to a retreat than the games. We focused on team building, and we had three services led by Angie Searles, the wife of the Pastor where our school is located. She did an excellent job making the chapel services interactive and relevant for the young people. Several kids stayed up to pray with the adults after the Monday night service, and, now that we've been back to school two days, I can tell some of them have been impacted beyond the moment.
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of retreats and the like. I think faith is a process, not an event, and we spend way too much time going from event to event. Nonetheless, these two days together were fun and meaningful for our class.