GRG

Got back from the retreat yesterday night. It was an interesting weekend. A conflicting weekend. There were many great things about it and some I wasn't quite comfortable with. We were in a room with over 600 girls and I would think that a goal would be to empower these girls. To help them know their worth is more than skin deep. And yet...

• They gave most of the door prizes to girls who claimed to have send/received more than 20,000 text messages in a month and to a girl who said she spent over $8,000 on a shopping spree.
• The host asked the recruiters from a college to come up and hand out the door prizes and "Look pretty".
• While doing a skit that was very much like Deal or No Deal, the girls were oogled by the guy playing Howie.
• The host repeated a challenge of who could say the alphabet backwards the fastest until the skinnier of the two girls won.

To be honest, there were more moments than I would like when I felt shocked or offended. Like I said before, perhaps I am more sensitive or something like that, but I really feel the church should be the last place we place emphasis on outward things. Here we were talking about how we 'love' everything from chocolate to our purses and what love REALLY is- Jesus sacrificing himself for us and we were somehow rewarding girls for material things. I found the message very confusing.

Despite that, I enjoyed the speaker and the classes we had. I also really enjoyed spending time with the younger ladies from our church. And perhaps that is the most important part.