Melanie - Update 2: Morristown Blog

This past weekend, I got the opportunity to go to a retreat in Gatlinburg with my teammates. This retreat was truly so special and refreshing for everyone who attended. On the bus ride to Gatlinburg from the campus, we all were in different teams broken into 7 groups that make up our church for G.O.D. My group was specifically about community prayer. We worked hard, shared ideas, Scripture, and made a presentation on the how, why, what, and where of community prayer. It was so amazing to see how much work we can produce from just a few hours of being together. When we arrived, we were surprised to see the leadership from our sister church from Morristown. We got to meet them and their families, play games with the kids, and fellowship over meals while we finished our presentations.

Then, we all had presented group after group, sharing with our group of leaders along with the leaders from Morristown about how to implement our version of community prayer in their context. The church community from Morristown is predominantly a Hispanic and Spanish-speaking community. We had the amazing Lavinia Becker translate for us while we made our presentations. This was an amazing learning opportunity as we had to learn how to communicate in a way that was effective and clear enough for Lavy to be able to translate.

The fact that we got to share our church’s curriculum with them so that it can bless their church community was so special. Their testimonies were so powerful. Specifically I spoke a lot to a man named Marcos from Morristown. He is a leader, a father, and has the brightest smile. He shared how he felt spiritually refreshed and filled with hope after this retreat. He was thankful to get to worship all together and see what God is doing.