Alabama Youth Retreat

This past weekend I went to Alabama Youth Retreat!  I had such a blast; Eliana and Yadi Pimentel, Callie and Courtney Lewis went with me.  I really enjoyed having the girls ride up with me; I think they enjoyed the retreat as much as I did.  It wasn't exactly a "shouting" retreat per say but God was there.  Brother Horne wasn't able to make it so I ended up playing the piano during the altar services and just really enjoyed being able to watch those in the altar seek the Lord.  Brother Michael Jernigan was the guest speaker and I really enjoyed them being there to minister!  I felt like as he ministered that it was a "heart to heart" with the each one that was there.  Saturday evening he stepped back and allowed the Holy Ghost to move as several obeyed the Lord and went to the altar.  I saw SEVERAL just crying while in the altar seeking the Lord.  You don't see this a lot but all of the musicians helping me left the stage to go and pray!  It's such a blessing to see musicians using their talent for the Lord but also to be able to yield themselves and go and pray and seek the Lord.

Sister Bishop taught a class on "Praying Through the Gates" and she did wonderful!  It didn't even feel like she should've been done when she quit.  Eliana said that it felt like it went by so fast and that she thoroughly enjoyed her class!  She has so many stories and words of encouragement to help you and teach you.  There's so much strength and wisdom bottled up in that woman; I love spending time with her!  She reminds me of my Granny Anders because she was so strong in the Lord and there was just so much wisdom that she had to share with others!

The retreat, as always, was filled with laughter!  When you're around the Horne's and the Keel's you better believe you're going to have several laughs.  Saturday evening Sis Horne was in charge of fun time and the first activity was so funny!  I laughed and laughed at the guys as they rolled around.

Here's the video for the first night of fun time.  Of course I don't have any pictures of anything serious going on.  HA HA!

The next day during free time we went and played a game out on the field.  At first I wasn't going to go down there because Liz asked me to come and check on the baby while she napped but I went ahead and headed to the field.  They were playing a game that I think my brother had watched on a video.  It was so fun and funny!!!  I don't think I've laughed as hard as I did.  We even created a video of each one and showed it Saturday night at the retreat and again we all laughed and laughed.  Here are some of the videos.

I'll try and post the rest of the videos later because there are so many.  I'm so glad I was able to go to the retreat!  I always enjoy it!  Every year that I've gone it's been really good...all except the scorpions which I've never seen in my life until I visited Alabama.

***Corn Maze***

The corn maze was awesome!  We had such a good time there with all the young people.  There were 14 of us that went.  Josh and Karen Farthing ended up going and Bro Josh's map skills really helped us to get out of the corn maze quickly.  The lady told us that it's 10 1/2 acres when we walked in and I'm thinking how in the world am I going to get out of here!  Hahaha  There were a lot of other activities there as well for everyone to do so waited til it got dark before we went into the maze.  They had a huge jumpy thingy that everyone got on and jumped....except for me.  I am too clumsy to get on stuff like that when there are other peoples kids on there.  I took a picture of them all jumping together.  I had them line up together and told them I was going to count to 3 and on 3 they were to all jump.  Well apparently most of them can't count to 3. They had me laughing so hard.  Here's a couple of pics that I got.

The young lady sitting on the edge was laughing at them too!  She thought they were a crazy group.  

They also had two slides there side by side and so I told the boys they should all go down it and I would get their pictures.  I got videos too and on one of them it sounds like a girl screaming.  I'm not sure if it's Brandon or Julian but I got a good laugh out of it. 

We had a really good time and at the end of the night before we left we were able to go on a hay ride as well.  It was just our group that was on it so it was special!  I really love fall time and going to the corn maze is one of my favorite things to do!