Men's Retreat 2013

I was really looking forward to going this year because I’ve been missing all the guy friends I have at CBC.  If not for my audit at work being delayed another week, I might not have been able to go.

Javad and I rode up and back with Bryan.  When they picked me up at work, they were a little stunned at the security guard knowing me by name, and by me having a reserved parking spot with my name on it.

We picked accountability & skill partners for the weekend and from there were put into four teams.  I was sitting next to Robert T., so we decided to partner up, and we went on the green team.

The speaker was Michael Pouliot, a football player from Montana who started his own men’s ministry called BattleZone.  Kenton went through it and now it seems like the whole program is coming to Campus.  Michael was a good speaker, very intense, but also very intentional.  His big plug was on relational discipleship, and creating multiple generations of discipleship from the idea of 1 Timothy 2:2, Paul discipled Timothy, who disciple faithful men to disciple others.

A couple exercises focused on teaching us things to later teach our partner (who wasn’t in the room learning it firsthand with us).  First was a dollar-bill trick to automatically link two paper clips together.  Later it was more serious stuff: 1) a PRAYERS acronym for daily praying that follows the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. 2) a “C-4” technique of emergency defense against temptations that get thrown at us.  The emphasis was heavy on learning each skill well enough to pass that knowledge on.

The food was amazing as always.  The only thing that disappointed was the cookies on Saturday night.  This year they weren’t on warmers (so they were hard instead of soft) and there was no milk.  Epic fail, but at least it helped me to stop after eating only three of them.

Friday night Spades tournament, I partnered with Josh B.  For round 1, we went up against Tim P. & Kyle L.  Tim went nil every hand, but only got it three times, and we still beat them.  Round 2, we lost by six points to Jon D. & Matt S.  I should have counted the points potential (I was last to bid on the last hand) and bid one more trick.

The weekend activity was “top shot.”  The four teams rotated through stations of 3D archery, throwing knives, tomahawks, and slingshot.  Lots of fun.  I wasn’t terrible, but I was not skilled at it.  During competition, though, I was only of only three guys on our team to break a bottle with the slingshot.  Daniel Y. was so thrilled that someone finally broke one for our team that he ran in and picked me up.  Marc (who is blind) and Chapman were the only other guys to break bottles (Chapman broke two).

A great weekend with encouraging conversations and fellowship.