Fall Youth Council Retreat FILLS Living RiverAnd better yet

The Fall Youth Council Retreat was Spirit Filled

The skies were a crystal clear blue on a beautiful fall day out at Living River. The sounds of 117 youth and adults filled the air. We had completely filled the new Living River camp. It was a great weekend of recreation, singing, energizers, fellowship, fun, small group Bible studies and worship. The Youth Council needs to be congratulated on a job well done in regards to planning and implementing this retreat, particularly considering it was the first time for the youth on Youth Council to organize and lead a retreat. They did a great job leading energizers, singing, small groups and recreation.

Katelyn Nutter and Micah Dowling, both seniors at Columbia Theological Seminary, were the keynoters. The theme was “Trees of the Field – Isaiah 55:12”. Their style of keynoting and preaching really resonated with the youth.

The afternoon recreation was a creative rendition of a “color run”. It ended with the colors being thrown in the air covering the participants. In many ways, this picture tells the whole story of this spirit filled retreat.

For many of us, the highlight was the closing worship. Katelyn and Micah had the small groups create a prayer chain which was draped over the Durham Chapel cross and down over the communion table. During the

sermon, Katelyn talked about the Holy Spirit, and how the Hebrew word for spirit is “ruah”, which means “breathe”. As she spoke, the wind picked up and began blowing the prayer chain. Later in worship, a young person was praying and spoke about the Holy Spirit and the breeze picked up and the prayer chain began waving. Later when Rev. Robert Hay, Associate Executive for Nurture, got up to serve communion, he felt led to point out the movement of the wind and its effect on the prayer chain. He shared that he didn’t see this as coincidence, but the presence of the Holy Spirit blowing over us. At the conclusion of worship, the wind began to blow harder than it had all day. It truly felt like the Holy Spirit was among us. It was a spirit filled retreat.

Unfortunately, later that day while traveling home, Lin Veasey and the Anniston area youth where involved in an auto accident. Her van was totaled but thankfully no one was injured. As they sat along side the road waiting to be picked up, one of the youth said to Lin, “You know the Holy Spirit has been with us all weekend and thank goodness the Spirit was with us this afternoon”.

We filled Living River to capacity and more importantly the Fall Youth Retreat at Living River was filled with the Holy Spirit.