Camp!!

Here are some pics of the ladies camp I was part of organising for this past weekend. The place we stayed is Called Ararat Lodge but is actually called The Ark by most people. This stained glass window is above the main door.

If you look really closely you can actually see an image of Noah's Ark as part of the rendering, to the left of the main archway.

It is literally in the middle of nowhere and just surrounded by nature, this mist in the hills was the view outside my room on Sunday morning.

I was the overall admin and organiser for the camp, but thankfully was blessed with a team of fabulous ladies who actually ran the weekend, doing the talks and worship, organising creative activities etc, because as I suspected my hands were full with a little girl who was out of her routine, wanting to get into everything and not wanting to sleep!! So my job was the 'details' over the weekend. Like these goodies on each pillow. When I made the verses cards I prayed that they would end up with the right people and even though they were quite randomly placed by me I had several people comment on the significance for them of the verse they got, God takes care of the details!! :-)

The main meeting room became a walk in rainbow (well the best I could do with rendered walls that make it hard to attach anything to). I had various coloured materials draped over all the windows, this beautiful rainbow banner (I didn't make this one, sewing is not my strong point!!), and Bible verses on coloured paper on the walls (some of which took the render off with the blu tak when we packed up, oops!!).

This treasure chest was also full of various Bible verses, 'treasure' from God for his children.

This was the foyer area which became a chill out space to reflect on Christ's love at the cross.

This was our banquet night (The red and purple banners were reused from the girls camp I ran last year, they're done with cardboard, I really need to learn to sew!!).

I made placecards for everyone and little bonboniere gifts of more choccie hearts. The verse on the place cards was the same as the banner about being taken to the banquet hall and God's banner over us being love.

The feedback we've had so far has been that the ladies got a lot out of the weekend and were really touched by God. Most women had prayer ministry at some point and we also had a time on the Sat arvo where no-one was allowed to talk to anyone but God which was a really powerful listening time for a lot of people.

As far as how it went for me well to be honest it was a lot of hard work with Bethany and I came home exhausted. I missed a lot of what was going on in the meetings and at one point felt like being there at all was pointless and I should just go home, but even through all that God did speak to me about what's going on in my family at the moment (which I will talk about another time) and I am still processing that. For now I am emotional, worn out and ready to start pulling back more and more from ministry to save what energy I do have for my family.