Retreat weekend...

I head out with our students and leaders this weekend for our annual PROXIMITY Retreat.

What is PROXIMITY? Well, it's not something cool like our student ministry name. It's not even the name of the camp. Rather, it's a concept of growing close that we've been trying to develop with our students. It's been at the heart of what we've done for almost 2 years now. And the basic focus is two fold:

• Help students grow closer to God
• Help students (and leaders) grow closer to one another

Simple enough, right? You'd think so. But then when you see our group together you would also see why we need this to be a focus.

We have a pile of students that have little or nothing to do with God. We also have a pile of students from a pile of different schools that don't know one another. And some weeks they act accordingly. PROXIMITY doesn't fix it entirely, but it is a tool we use that helps.

We also used grilled cheese once upon a time. And that worked too.

Anyways, I'm going through all the pre-retreat jitters. Did I pack everything? What am I forgetting? What problems are we going to face? Who isn't going to show up on time? What if the rental vans aren't ready? What if the students hate this? What if I hate it? Will I survive?

As for right now, I am aware of the following:

• the 4 vans are booked
• the camp is expecting us (or at least most of us)
  
• pop, water and munchies have been purchased
• the teaching times have been planned
• some prizes have been set aside
• games have been prepared
• registration forms are all in one place
• worship leader is prepped and ready to go
• Tim Horton's French Vanilla mix is set aside (yikes, I almost forgot my mug!)
  

Now if I could only figure out what am I forgetting!?!?