Annual Women's Retreat 2017 Part 1

      Every fall, I attend a local women's retreat. It's a fantastic event where women of all ages, from different backgrounds, and from different churches all come together for a weekend of growing in our relationships with each other and our relationships with Jesus. The event starts on Friday evening and ends in the late morning on Sunday. This is my third year attending this retreat. The first year I attended, in 2015, I made the decision to surrender my life to Christ sitting on the couch in the cozy fellowship hall directly across from a beautiful fireplace. I had about five women surrounding me and praying for me. We ended up praying and talking until about 1:00 in the morning! I had gone to church and considered myself a Christian for as long as I could remember, but I knew that I was forever changed that night. This annual retreat has become very special to me and I consider it my favorite event of the year! 
    The venue is a beautiful Christian retreat center located right in the middle of the beautiful mountains here in upstate NY. It has an incredible view--especially in the fall!

See? Wouldn't you love to wake up to that in the morning?

The event is structured roughly like this:

     Friday night, between 5:30-6:30 PM, everyone arrives. You are given your room assignment and then you have time to unpack and settle in. Then, you can go back down from the dorms to the fellowship hall for some fellowship time before our service starts at 7:00. 
     Our opening service is usually about 2 hours. We start off with praise and worship, and then we listen to a speaker. After our opening service, we have an ice cream social and hang out for a bit before going back to our rooms. 

     On Saturday we have a morning session that is similar to the Friday night session, except there are two speakers. Then, after lunch, we participate in workshops that we chose ahead of time. There are two workshop sessions and we get to pick which workshops we want to attend. After dinner, we have an evening service. Then, like Friday night, we have snacks and hang out until we go back to our rooms (there are breaks in the schedule but, for the sake of brevity, I'm just giving you the highlights). 

Sunday morning, after breakfast, we have a wrap up session. Then, there is a typically a prayer session and people can choose to stay to pray for people, ask for prayer, or both. 
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Accessibility:
This event does very well with accessibility, considering its size and its attendees.I feel very accommodated in terms of my personal disabilities. The event is structured in such a way that I can rest if needed. There is also a pervasive non-judgmental attitude that makes me feel that I can take a break if I need to, which may not seem like a big deal, but it really helps me a lot! 
     Physical disabilities can be accommodated as well. There are rooms available that are downstairs. Furniture in all areas can also be moved around to accommodate for equipment, if need be. 
     Accessibility for Deafness and blindness has not been largely addressed because there hasn't been a need thus far. There have been one or two times that someone was hard of hearing and they were offered a seat in the front and all the speakers made sure to use microphones (these HOH individuals did not sign). Because of the attitudes of the women on the planning team, I know that they would do everything in their power to meet any new accessibility needs that may arise. 
     I had originally planned to talk about some of the things I learned over the weekend, but this post is getting lengthy already. So, I think my next post will be a part two where I will share some of the topics that the speakers addressed and what I took away from it.
Part two is now published! You can check read it here.