I just returned from my church's church retreat. If you've never been to a church retreat and you get a chance you should go. They sure can be a lot of fun. We went to a camp a little over an hour ago last night and spent the night and came back this evening. We played this game where we wore homemade necklaces with the fruit of the spirit on them. This game lasted the whole retreat. We had 3 words we couldn't say or anyone that heard you say it would get one of your fruits. Of course the one with the most points at the end won. The words you couldn't say were cold, snow and winter. Do you know how hard that can be when it's November in Ohio and we were making homemade Christmas cards? It sure makes you think before you speak. It also makes you listen to everyone else around so it was good. Hard but good. And it was actually a lot of fun. Somehow I managed to win and got a fruit basket with 9 different fruits....how fitting is that since their are 9 fruits of the spirit. Then we had a series of games that we played and all the points added up to a grand total and there were actually 2 winners for this one. One for the men and one for the women. The first one was Power of 10. Questions were actually taken from Drew Carey's game show. Then we played charades using the parables. Do you have any idea how hard that can be? Not very easy at all. Then the 3rd game was using the words peace and patience and coming up with as many 2 letter words or more you can. No abbreviations or proper names. Anyhow our pastor is really into Corvettes and with the parables it was figured that he would win. So the men's prize was a really nice book about Corvettes. I somehow managed to win this as well and got a really nice Thomas Kincade gift set. I really love Thomas Kincade so that was pretty fitting too. It's not all fun and games though. We also have Bible study and worship. We also made Christmas cards for service men. That was a lot of fun too. And of course the fellowship is great too. It is an awesome time and it is really worth it if you ever have a chance.

The fruit of the spirit.....joy, peace, love, kindness, self-control, goodness, patience, faithfulness and gentleness. These are all characteristics that we all should have as good christians. Think about how you show these characteristics or how others around you show these characteristics. These are things that we are thankful for but don't really think about.  

I guess that's enough about my weekend. Hope it gives you something to think about.