Beth Mabry >> Key Club: Escape Recap

Dear Team,

THANKS so much for praying for Escape. We had a wonderful time and it was encouraging to see and hear how God is working in lives.

Some Highlights:

Team Comp was awesome this year... the Multnomah team did a wonderful job of coming up with creative middle school friendly games. Their favorites were Tron (students had to rescue their team mascot and camp speaker from a virus) and Mission Impossible (students had to build a molecule to save their water source after the wicked white witch poisoned it while not being caught by pirates). During animal soccer (a slight variation of mud rugby) one of our students suffered a broken nose, however, he was able to finish out the weekend with us and had a good time.

The speaker communicated the Gospel and God's love for students well. He shared the stories of Jesus calming the storm and walking on water. The message of Jesus' unending presence during the storms we face in life resonated with students. On Saturday night I had a great conversation with one of my girls who was struggling in a few areas. The "storm" she was facing was trying to measure up to other peoples standards and expectations. As we began talking, it was clear that she was also striving for God's love. It ended up being an awesome conversation about grace and God's unconditional love for each one of us.

The experiential learning times helped students to further process the messages. We did two hands on group activities that lent themselves to talk about storms - Who do we trust when faced with challenges? What voices to do we listen to? In the midst of loud distractions, how can we hear God's voice?

Overall, I feel our students gelled well together and built good memories. We had youth group on Tuesday, the day after returned from camp and there was a fun buzz from the weekend. We gave students an opportunity to share some highlights and things they learned.

In the coming weeks we're going to begin a new teaching series for our middle school group. We're calling it "Community 101" and we'll take a look at what community is, why it's important, and things that build and kill community. We're looking forward to talking about relationships and encouraging students to grow in Jesus and with one another.

Some pictures of the retreat...