Refreshing Retreat

This weekend was the Asas Family retreat so we had a great time of refreshment with all of the missionary families here at the Anapolis base. We went to a nice little place that was like a retreat center with a conference room, pools, game room, etc. We stayed from Thurs to Sat and really had a great time. We had an interesting guest speaker that taught on the theme of God increasing and us decreasing - always an important perspective to regain. We spent tons of time talking, eating, and swimming. In fact, I enjoyed the sun a bit too much and experienced a bit of "sun sickness" by the end and when we got home...but the weekend was definitely worthwhile for all of the refreshment we had. Here are some pictures:

It was nice to actually get a good picture together. Since our camera is a bit more complicated to use, it seems we're never together in a picture! By the way, do you notice something different about Jeyson?

Pool volleyball

Jeyson in the middle of the game

The wonderful, bountiful breakfast spread

Me and Camila enjoying coffee during breakfast

Some of the ladies getting ready to listening to the speaker in the morning.

Our wonderful friends, Cininha and Paulo. Cininha has helped me so much by spending time practicing Portuguese with me and Paulo joined Asas the same year as Jeyson so they have gotten closer over the years. We were so sad (though happy with them) to hear the news that they will be leaving the mission in April to move to Portugal, where Cininha is from. They feel led to join in evangelism there and spend more time with Cininha's family who does not know the Lord. We will be sad to say goodbye, but we are so thankful for the time we had together with them.

The retreat center was decorated with an antique farm theme. We had heard that there was a museum there and were interested to visit since we love museums (in fact our first dates were to the museums in Chicago). Anyway, we were interested to tour around, imagining a large building of old farm tools. However, we had to laugh when we finally visited the museum, only to find it was about the size of a small walk-in closet! We enjoyed it anyway though and are so glad to be living in a time where you can plug in your iron instead of like the ones in the museum that you had to put hot coals in!

Here's a final group shot of almost everyone from the Anapolis base of Asas de Socorro (expect for me and a few other who were taking the pictures). All I can say is, what a great, refreshing weekend.

Before leaving, just one note about comments. First, we LOVE getting comments on our blog, so please feel free to leave one. However surprisingly this week we got a bunch of nasty junk/spam messages left on our blog (18 to be exact!) So for now anyway, we set our blog up so we will check the messages before they actually get published to make sure this doesn't continue. So, please leave a comment, but FYI it won't appear right away since we'll have to approve it. We can't wait to hear from you!