Marriage and Mission retreat for 2009 will be September 17-20. Save the dates!
It’s hard to have a healthy, life giving impact in the world if our own relationships are in disrepair. None of us are perfect in our relationships and we know that it takes a whole lot of work to keep relationships healthy. As a community we strive to support and encourage each other and offer marriage enrichment opportunities.
What’s the retreat going to look like in 2009?
- Thursday September 17th arrive in Duluth for a stay at the Hampton Inn Canal Park. Check in after 3 pm and enjoy an evening away with your spouse. Canal Park has some nice restaurants and shops to enjoy together. Romantic dinner, walk along the lake, watch the ships enter and leave port.
- Friday September 18th we will gather after breakfast and share a day of fun and learning around relationships as we journey up the north shore of Lake Superior. We will eat dinner in Grand Marais (pizza at Sven and Oles), and arrive at Wilderness Canoe Base between 8 and 9 pm.
- Saturday September 19th we will do some work around the camp (which was damaged by a forest fire 2 summers ago). We will mix work and play liberally. We will get some work done around the camp, explore the beauty of the boundary waters, and also have some time to strengthen our marriages. Karen Stevensen, a licensed marriage counselor and pastor, will be joining us again this year and facilitating some marriage encounter exercises throughout the weekend. And this year we will also have our own Heatherlyn join us (and Jason too!) to bring joy and beauty through music and artistic expression.
- Sunday September 20th we will have breakfast, close with worship and head home renewed!
important things to note
- Wilderness Canoe Base has been working to reconstruct new cabins for their guests since the fire of 2007. Last year we worked on some of those cabins and this year we will see the progress. Sleeping in a bunkhouse with y’all was fun last year but if you want some privacy on Friday and Saturday evening we will determine cabin assignments by order of payments received for the retreat. Get em in early!
- You can send your payment of $225 to: River of Joy, PO Box 70, Prior Lake, MN 55372 or give it to me personally at worship on Sunday evening.
- Call Hampton Inn in Duluth (218 720 3000) to secure your room for Thursday evening or you can do the early rise and join us in Duluth on Friday morning.
- Marriage Blessing- You may know that River of Joy has dedicated the month of July to strengthening marriages and challenged each other to find ways to creatively bless other couple’s marriages. In response to that challenge, someone has taken the challenge to heart and has decide that the cost of this retreat should not prevent you from attending. If you can’t work the cost into your family budget, this family has offered to help cover the cost of the retreat. What a marriage blessing response! Shoot me a confidential email if you would like to go and the cost is prohibitive for you. So cool to see hearts alive in blessing the world!
