Grace Alive met in the church parking lot at 8:30 in the morning, packed up the cars, and drove 2.5 hours to Leoni Meadows. The weather during the retreat was beautiful, and the slight chance of rain didn't happen. Once everything was in the cabins, we went into a giant field and played a fun but tiring game.

I think it was called something like "trenches", but there were two teams and the object was to get to the top of the hill and touch the "base". Certain team members carried balls, and if a ball-carrier touched the base, it would be worth 2 points instead of 1. Everyone had a total of 10 minutes to try and reach base without having their flags pulled. It was fun sneaking around in the tall grass, but my black hair was a disadvantage. I got captured 20 feet away from base once, and got to base once with the ball. During the games a cellphone, camera, and key were lost in the field. We spent a while linking arms and combing the place, but we ended up not being able to find it.

The next activity was on the basketball courts. There was a huge pile of wood in the center, and every team had a hammer and nails. The object was to build the best chair possible using only one piece of wood at a time and seven pieces total. There were many criteria involved, such as time spent, stability, and looks. One team spent only a few minutes nailing two legs horizontally to a board. Everyone called their chair the "footstool". When everyone was done, each team had to "market" their chair. Some of the things people said were hilarious. Ours had an artistic and creative design to it, with diagonal support beams on the legs. When the final scores were distributed, we discovered that even the footstool got higher marks than us...

Once the chair building was finished, we went down to the amphitheater and played telephone charades. Our team was one of the two that actually guessed the correct answer (changing a violin string).

We then had a meeting, worship, and message at the nature center. The theme was being good christian stewards of everything Christ has given us. I really enjoyed the message and the "man talk" afterwards. Nate shared with us points for living a disciplined lifestyle.

The rest of the night was spent in various other competitions to earn points for your team. There was an event to find bubble gum in whipped cream and blow a golf ball sized bubble, an event where todd and david had to tied their 4 shoes with only 1 hand each, an event to wrap a present with 1 hand each, and finally an event to find a whistle in whipped cream and blow it.

Before everyone went to their cabins for the night, people that wanted to started a "bonfire" and we sang worship songs around it while eating dessert.