Girls Retreat

Our teen girls are a challenge. Hardened by life so early in life, they have layers of walls making authentic relationships difficult and messy. Trust takes years of consistency and honesty to build.

Some days I wrack my brain for hours thinking of how to be relevant and best connect; I constantly have to put my frustrations before God. He is the one working. He holds their futures. I must “simply” trust and be faithful. This is much easier said than done.

Each week we go to Youth for Christ club with our teens. This exposes us all to other Jesus followers and it allows the leaders to connect with other teens outside of our ministry. The high school girls at club are especially challenging – some weeks I can barely get them to speak a word to me. It can be discouraging.

A few weeks back, Youth for Christ hosted a Girls’ Retreat that we got to take part of. Twelve girls (five from CityView), and five leaders spent Friday into Saturday together. Going into the retreat, I had little confidence that any connections would be made outside of the girls from CityView. God proved me wrong.

The atmosphere was very relaxed with no guys around. We ate a family dinner and then transitioned into an icebreaker and a lesson on Psalm 139. After the lesson, we broke up into randomly assigned small groups; my group was two CityView girls I regularly meet with for discipleship and a girl I had never once spoken to.  I prayed a quick “God help me to not screw this up,” and we started talking.

Halfway through our discussion, the girl I barely knew asked “when did you decide you believed this?” I was floored. I got to give my testimony in which I talked about the direction of my life. This led to her asking, “will I be a bad person if I stay on my own path?” Before I could answer, one of the other girls said “Romans 3:23 says that we are all sinners, so we are already bad people” (something we had worked on in discipleship weeks prior!!) which led into me sharing the gospel again. Our small group ended with her saying she wasn’t sure she was ready for her life to change, but she had a lot to think about. Pray for this teen – God is moving in her heart.

Later in the retreat, all the girls got their hair and makeup done, put on fancy clothes, and did a photo shoot. This allowed me to spend one-on-one time with each of the girls as I took their photos. Crazy how God began equipping me at 12 years old in photography classes (before I really even knew Him) for moments like these.

Please be praying for the twelve girls who attended the girls retreat. Pray that God opens the door for more gospel-conversations in the weeks and months to come and that we are able to connect more teens into the gospel-centered community being built at CityView Shoreway on Thursday nights.