Gatlinburg 2013

So, I told y'all I was gonna be gone this weekend, so I thought I'd give you a brief description of the AMAZING time I had on our Gatlinburg fall retreat.

To start off, I should go ahead and clarify that this trip was beyond incredible, pretty much the best weekend of my life. I'm so thankful for every single person there, it was absolutely gorgeous, and we had SO much fun. I grew so much closer to all of the people there and realized some pretty great things about people I now know I definitely had the wrong idea about.

So basically, it was the description of awesome.

Here is a list of some of the things we did while we were there:

• We went shopping a bunch, in Gatlinburg and in Pigeon Forge.
• We spent a lot of time at the cabin we stayed at playing games and getting to know each other.

• We went on a hike, a bunch of us (myself included) fell in the freezing creek, but we took a bunch of pictures, climbed trees, & had a ton of fun. 

The creek we went to on our hike :D

• We had a film festival! I could go on and on about this because it was a TON of fun, but basically we all made a movie in a specific genre & had a list of things that had to be in it, then we went back to the cabin & watched them, & laughed our heads off.

Wax Avengers needed a picture

• We went mini-golfing and go-carting, I did not go-cart, & learned that I REALLY stink at mini-golf, but it was still so much fun. A bunch of the sophmore guys were behind us and whenever they caught up they started yelling at us to hurry up, it made one of my friends really mad and embarrassed, but me and my other friend just laughed XD
• We had worship and discussions twice a day, this is the time when we stopped goofing off for a few minutes and really talked about the reason we were there, to get to know each other better so we could learn to bear with each other & unite to show the love of Christ to others.

The first morning, post-rain, view outside our cabin, does it get any more gorgeous!?

• I spent a lot of time taking selfies on my friends' phones. No shame.
• We made a list of hashtags describing different parts of the trip. :P

Only some of these will be explained if you ask, I only put this picture on here because you don't know my friend therefore you don't know who's who on here. :P

• We rode in the van, which probably sounds obvious, but this was one of the most fun parts of the trip because of who I was in the van with, every ride was H.I.L.A.R.I.O.U.S.
• We spent about 2 hours writing cards to each other telling each other what we loved about them, I feel bad now because mine were so generic & the ones that I got were all beautiful and kind & amazing.

This envelope originally had my last name on it, but for safety reasons, now it does not.

• We didn't get our cards right away, later that day we sat in a circle & one at a time, we all sat in the middle & who ever wanted to talk told us their favorite things about us. This was hands-down my favorite part of the trip, I totally loved the entire experience, letting each other know that we care about each other & all the different things we love about each other. I can honestly say only a few times in my life have I ever felt so loved, people I barely knew told me they thought I was an amazing person, & I loved being able to tell other people that I don't normally talk to what I like about them. 

It was one of the best weekends of my life, the ONLY thing that could have made it any better, is if it had been longer. I'm so thankful for this experience, and I already can't wait for next year.

xoxo

Molly