Mid-year Retreat Funness!!

Our mid-year retreat was held in beautiful Denver, CO. We all gathered (in person and through skype) on Thursday to begin our retreat. Stefanie and Tony's homework for all of the volunteers was to tell our stories using 5 criteria we had been given ahead of time, but also to be creative. Everyone did a wonderful job of creatively sharing their story especially when it came to using each of our 5 senses during the presentation.

After everyone had shared, we came together to talk about our collective story. It was incredible how many of us had gone through the exact same roller coaster of emotions without realizing everyone was feeling many of the same emotions. I think this realization brought our group even closer and helped us all to feel not so alone in our community life and ministry. We were also given the task to write our collective story in a short paragraph and were given a very limited amount of time to do so. This proved to be a little challenging, especially trying to make sure that everyone was being heard including the NY girls, but we were able to push through and come up with a short paragraph about our time so far as Dominican Volunteers (at the end of this blog entry.

As the retreat came to an end, it was hard to see everyone scatter to many different parts of the country, but comforting to know we would be together soon enough for our end of the year retreat. The retreat was a great time to come back to our ministry sites refreshed and energetic!

*I want to especially thank Tony and Stefanie for all they do for the DVUSA. There is no way that my year, and I am sure the same is for the other volunteers, would be as life changing if the two of you were not part of it. You do so much behind the scenes work and as much as some of us complained about sharing our stories, I think we all had a great time listening to one another! Thanks a bunch!!!*

"We have learned that we need personal time and time with others as well as that personalities can change. We can see God's power in our lives and the need to trust God's will. We learned that faith is diverse within intergenerational relationships. We have struggled with communication with both those we serve and within the communities we live.

We have experienced challenges concerning trusting the Holy Spirit and patience. We have also experienced growth in self and relational knowledge, new things, trust, and vulnerability."