Kairos 53

As I mentioned yesterday, I just got back from a really awesome retreat called Kairos! I went with a group of about 40 girls from school, and I ended up having a lot of fun. We left on Tuesday afternoon and came back Friday night.

I can't tell you a whole lot about the retreat because I know that there are girls who read my blog who haven't gone on it yet. They ask us not to tell them what activities you do on Kairos so it doesn't ruin the surprise of it. Going into the retreat, I was SO frustrated that I had no clue what to expect, but now I have to admit - it is definitely better not knowing!

So, I'm just going to share a few things that don't give anything away. Of course I'm dying to tell you all about it, but I really can't!

This is the room I stayed it - you had a private room, but it was kind of creepy!

Seriously, how creepy is this closet? I thought a killer was going to pop out and hack me to pieces.....ha!

Some of my friends and I took pictures in the closet :)

This was the area where we spent a lot of our time. I was trying to take a picture of my friend Andrea, but she hid under the table :)

These were from the last day.....

Can you tell how incredibly awful I look? I was running on only a few hours of sleep each night, and my allergies were terrible, so my eyes were looking pretty crazy!

I was really nervous going into the retreat at first, but by end I ended up really enjoying it. I liked that it was totally different from any retreat or really anything in general that I had experienced before.

I also had a really awesome small group - we ended up getting along great and we had a bunch of inside jokes by the end of the week. I've got to share the one story with you because it was SO neat.

This was my small group, and as you can see, we're holding a Bible in this picture.

Well, this bible had been through a lot. One of this girls in my group had accidentally spilled an entire cup of hot chocolate all over it. We were cracking up when it dried and the pages were all brown and wavy.

We gave it to one of the adults, who set it aside. Well, the next day we needed to use our Bibles to look through and find some passages that we really liked. We decided we wanted to use our "Chocolate Bible" to look through. So we grabbed it, and we all had our own Bibles that we were looking through. When we would find a passage we wanted to share, we would read it out loud to our group.

Well, we ended up randomly finding a piece of paper tucked inside the "Chocolate Bible" with some verses written down. Magically, the piece of paper was NOT covered in chocolate. We all got excited as we looked up the passage and read it out loud. It turned out to be our absolute favorite passage. We all loved it, as it was perfect for what we were supposed to be looking for. We all agreed that it wasn't just a coincidence, and we believed that God had somehow done that for a reason. It was SO neat.

AND, I totally just realized that the paper said 2 Peter 1:3-12, but we ended up looking up 1 Peter 1:3-12. Oh well! The passage from 1 Peter really was perfect :)

Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope, and so we look forward to possessing the rich blessings that God keeps for his people. He keeps them for you in heaven, where they cannot decay or spoil or fade away. They are for you, who through faith are kept safe by God's power for the salvation which is ready to be revealed at the end of time.

Be glad about this, even though it may now be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many kinds of trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine. Even gold, which can be destroyed, is tested in fire; and so your faith, which is much more precious than gold, must also be tested, so that it may endure. Then you will receive praise and glory and honor on the Day when Jesus is revealed. You love him, although you have not seen him, and you believe in him, although you do not now see him. So you rejoice with a great and glorious joy which words cannot express, because you are receiving the salvation of your souls, which is the purpose of your faith in him.

It was concerning this salvation that the prophets made careful search and investigation, and they prophesied about this gift which God would give you. They tried to find out when the time would be and how it would come. This was the time in which Christ's Spirit in them was pointing, in predicting the sufferings that Christ would have to endure and the glory that would follow. God revealed to these prophets that their work was not for their own benefit, but for yours, as they spoke about those things which you have now heard from the messengers who announced the Good News by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. These are things which even the angels would like to understand.