Hi everyone!
This month
I would like to report something about our retreat at Lake Puckaway,WI.
Before
I start to tell you about the retreat, I
will explain shortly for the people who don´t know what a retreat at Franciscan
Outreach means. A retreat for us volunteers means that our community (all the
volunteers plus Rachel and StephJ) will go for a few days on vacation out of
town. We talk about community life (How is community going? Do we have
any problems? How is work going?, etc.) and do a lot of activities. Most of the
activities are pretty fun, for example walking with the whole community on the
frozen Lake Puckaway. But some are also very spiritually and mentally deep.
We went
from the 12th of January til the 14th of January to Lake Puckaway. StephJ´s
parents, who are super nice to our community and also do a lot for us
volunteers, invited us to their lake house. It´s right next to the lake. And
the view out of the windows is just incredibly amazing, because you see the
whole lake!
 |
| Clemens exploring Lake Puckaway |
We started
our trip on the 12th in the evening after the kitchen staff were done with
their work. We drove with two cars (because we are too many people for one car)
up to Wisconsin round about 4 hours.
After we
arrived, it was circa midnight, so we ate a snack and went to bed. The next morning we woke up really
early and had a great breakfast and did a few reflections this day and talked
about how the community life is going etc. After the reflections we went on the
frozen lake and enjoyed the awesome atmosphere. Dominik and I walked to the
middle of the lake and watched the anglers while they did their ice fishing.
This was definitely an awesome experience!
On Sunday
we also did three reflections which was really important for our community
because we talked a lot about deep stuff. And in the
evening we played some nice games like "Werewolf" and
"Taboo".
On Monday
morning we went, after we had breakfast and took a lot of nice community
pictures on the frozen lake, back to Chicago.
It was a
great weekend, thanks everyone!
By: Clemens Schumacher
Hometown: Peine,
Germany
