Horn Creek Intern Reflections: Intern Retreat

After returning from our Easter break where everyone was able to take nine days to go home or visit friends; we all met up at Jeff's cabin in Breckinridge, CO for an intern retreat. The retreat was designed to fulfill several purposes: to bring us all together as a group, to have some fun before we transitioned back into work, and ultimately to get our hearts focused and prepared for the fast approaching summer. The three day retreat consisted of snow shoeing for some, a Rockies game in Denver, and enough food to feed a small country! Our afternoons were filled with discussions on articles that we had read, mixed in with some affirmations. With most of the interns praying for discernment for what God has next for our lives, we have been using our meeting time to take one individual intern to affirm and challenge them in personal areas of their lives that we have seen over the course of this year. These timeshave proven to be very fruitful as we get to have our peers both affirm us on what they see our strengths to be, and yet challenge us in areas thatwe could work on. The entire retreat was interwoven with prayer; prayer for individual interns, prayer for the internship as a whole, and prayer for this summer and the challenges that may arise. One of the biggest topics of the weekend was getting our hearts ready for the summer and the summer staff who will be arriving in just a few weeks. We as the intern staff have an incredible oppurtunity to minister and be ministred to by these summer staff. All the interns are going to be leading a small group on sunday mornings for the summerstaff, and since most of us are in leadership positions this summer, we will have plenty of intentional interaction with them as we work.Probably the most impactfulpart of the retreat for me was meditating on an article we read. The article was talking about the necessity of being rooted in Christ. I realize that this seems so obvious, and something that my five year old niece could challenge you with, but it is a biblical truth that I forget so often. In my life it is all too easy for my identity to be put in things or other people, and if im perfectly honest with myself, I would go so far as to say that I care about what certain people in my life think about me more so than what God thinks about me. Isaiah 7:9b says that "If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all." I can't tell you how quickly my faith shifts form God to man, and then to see how quickly i fail to stand.Trying to put that in context of working here, living here, and even in regards to investing into the soon to arrive summer staff, I cannot be obedient to God's voiceif my ears aren't aimed at Him. All in all I would say it was a good time together, the rockies pulled out an overwhelming victory, pounds of beef and chicken were consumedin the form of fajitas, and God was able to meet us there and speak to our hearts.