So like I awkwardly alluded to last week…I had quite the spring break. I spent the first half at the beach with great friends fixing up a beach house for the owners to rent out. We laughed really hard, but also worked really really hard! So super fun and super exhausting. We got back late on Tuesday evening only to start Radford’s first ever Prayer Retreat the next evening. Which was also exhausting, to say the least.

This all started as a crazy idea in a staff meeting in January. We were all talking through a spring break trip…we’ve always offered the students semi glamorous options. Panama City Beach or DC…and our next idea was anything but glamorous. Our director Jake said he’d been feeling like we should challenge a couple students to stay over the break in Radford and pray for the campus. And somehow…we all jumped on board. Radford is anything but glamourous. It is where the  students spend almost all of their year! How could we ever expect students to spend part of their break in Radford…just so they could learn about prayer and pray together for the campus?! But somehow, the Lord surprised us. Together with the staff, there were around 30 of us together for a long five days of surrender, confession, forgiveness, prayer, fasting, and ultimately devotion to God and our little campus.

This experience was unlike any other that I’ve had at a retreat. There was total flexibility (aka we didn’t have a schedule) with long hours every day together sharing life stories, talking through heavy concepts of confession and vulnerability. It was emotionally exhausting. But somehow, we were all full. Because of the focus and unity and communion we had with each other and the Lord, we were full of God. Totally sustained by Him. It was as if the veil between us and Heaven was just a little thinner for awhile. And peace reigned a little fuller in our hearts and lives. I’d love to share more, but it feels like an intimate experience. One that was so real it feels weird to even talk about. But it was a privilege to be apart of a little army for a week, battling together for our campus in prayer.

One the last day, we all did an activity to help us cling to and remember what God had done in our lives the last four days. We each got a rock, or Ebenezer stone, to decorate and remember how God had moved. We then built a little tower of them in the Cru office, just like they used to in the Old Testament, to commemorate all that God had done. That was the only time I was free enough to document a little of our first Radford spring break :]

my ebenezer :]

We also got to split into “cell groups” so that we could share a little more in depth and really get in each other’s lives. Here are some of the women’s groups.

And of course, some really poor quality iPhone images. We set a Christmas tree on fire! Such a cool representation of how God looks at our sin when we’re in Christ.

Here’s everyone on the last day :]