"Windows of Hope: Encouragement for Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times"

 "Windows of Hope: Encouragement for Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times" was the theme of the ladies retreat in South Dakota last weekend. 

 When I was asked about possible ideas for the retreat, I found out that the craft that was being planned was to decorate old window frames. So I suggested a windows theme, and it was accepted.

The themes for my four workshops were the following:

I. Valuing Mundane Tasks by Kitchen Windows

II. Finding Hope by Broken Windows

III. Being Candles of Encouragement in Dark Windows

IV. (a) Seeing Christ through Dusty Windows

      (b )Seeing Christ through Open Windows

***

This retreat was envisioned by a young couple, Mosheh and Vange Mitchem, who wanted to give the ladies in the church and others a break from their ordinary, hard-working lives.

Here below delicious fixings for homemade fajitas are being set out Friday night. 

Clarissa Lyon decorated the tables. The rustic wood slices were ones left over after a wedding, slices that her father, Ron Arnold, had cut only days before his sudden death. Those were very special. 

Mosheh Mitchem and his boys set up a tent on the edge of the farm where they bedded down for the night, while many of the younger ladies, girls and young babies who had to come along bedded down in various crannies and corners of the barn.  

 Had someone wanted, they could have slept in the tree house!

 The first workshop was the theme

"Valuing Mundane Tasks by Kitchen Windows." 

In between quotes from Quakers and other early sources, I shared about the value God places on the ordinary tasks that we women and girls do about our homes and with our children, comparing the routine and mundane rounds of mothering and homemaking with the routines of a mother hen.

God values our homemaking tasks with equal value to our prayer times and Bible reading and church attendance; for washing dishes, cooking meals, and doing laundry are all part of doing His will. 

Here is a link to another post I wrote several years ago along this same line, which I wish I had remembered before the retreat. 

https://prairielucasfamily.blogspot.com/2017/06/who-wants-to-do-dishes-when-you-can-be.html

Mmmm. Looks so good. This was part of supper Saturday evening, and reminds me of one of the games we played during the first workshop,

where each lady on two competing teams had to write on the dry erase board a dish or kitchen utensil she had scrubbed, along with a unique adjective. No one was allowed to use the same dish or adjective twice. 

I would tweak that game somewhat if we did it again, having only one lady at a time up front, so that all could see the board.  

Prizes went to whoever wrote certain random dishes that I had chosen ahead of time.

Another game we played was "My Favorite Job" in which I had written all sorts of different household chores on tags, one of which was placed on each lady's forehead. 

She was not allowed to see what was on her tag, but could see anyone else's.  

Each lady (including me, for I joined in) had to try to guess what her favorite job was (even if it was not really her favorite) by asking questions that could only be answered with yes or no.

This game worked like "My Secret Identity." First ones to guess correctly received prizes of scrubbies my littlest daughter had knitted. 

Another really good game was Four Corners Window Game. (I tweaked a ladies' retreat Icebreaker game I found online). Each corner had a board with a number written on it, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Then Crystal would ask window-related questions that had a multiple choice answer, and each lady would have to choose between 1, 2, 3, and 4 and go to that respective corner. 

It was a great way to move around and get to talking to one another.  

You had to move to a corner; no standing in the middle.

I joined the ladies this time while Crystal directed the game.

There were questions like "If you had your choice of curtains for your kitchen windows, would they be 1-yellow, 2-white, 3-blue, or 4-red?" or "Is your most dreaded household chore 1-doing laundry, 2-cleaning bathrooms, 3-washing dishes, or 4-washing windows?" 

That game had ten questions and I thought it went very well, for it kept us all hopping and talking to one another about our choices, or the lack of a choice we would have preferred, which is exactly the purpose of the activity--to get to know one another in a fun way. 

We also had a couple "Have You Ever?" quizzes, one of which was window-related (Have you washed the inside of your vehicle's window in the last year? Have you ever broken a window? Can you see any natural body of water out your window? etc."

And one that was related to yucky chores women end up doing. "Have you ever cleaned up throw-up? Gotten up more than seven times in one night with sick kids? [Someone said, "How about been up ALL NIGHT with them?"] Fixed plumbing? etc.

There were prizes for the most positive responses or for certain random ones I had chosen ahead of time.

 

 I had found 8-packs of these facial tissues (below) at the grocery store on clearance for just 25 cents a pack, and my girls had helped me one day ahead of time to repack them into 3-packs for a little object lesson, and gifts for each of the ladies. Each individual pack had a little title I taped on,

Hope for your past

Hope for your present

Hope for your future

These little packs of tissues, tied up not in pretty ribbons, but in raw-edged quilting strips, (since, after all, life does not always come to us neatly wrapped in pretty ribbons) represent all those times when we are shedding tears at the kitchen sink, crying ourselves to sleep on hot pillows, and grieving over many things–regrets, sins, mistakes, hurts, other people’s issues, lost souls, worries.

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The above photo isn't the greatest, but Crystal and Hannah were helping me package these. Crystal did such a nice job of tying the wide quilt strips into cute bows.

Friday evening for "Finding Hope by Broken Windows" I shared from these themes:

I. Hope shining for broken hearts
II. Hope stenciling new stories from broken dreams

III.V. Hope sparkling beyond a broken future

IV. Hope softening broken relationships

For point II, I shared a poem I'd written about broken dreams, and also shared about how Jonathan's and my own broken dream of spending our lives on the mission field has been redirected into a different form of missions--something we were both involved in that very weekend.
For the last point, I told a story that happened in Papua New Guinea when we were there.

In between workshops, there were crafts and activities that Joy Albertson had prepared, such as decorating a prayer journal. This below is the one I did. I do really simple things. I am not a crafty person, but I liked how it turned out.

Saturday morning the theme was "Being Candles of Encouragement in Dark Windows." Ladies had been asked to bring along their favorite quotes or clippings written by a lady author, to share with one another. I could tell there was anticipation about this activity, and the participation was good as well. We had a game with those quotes, dividing into two teams, where each team had to guess the authors of the quotes the other team shared. This was the first time I did a game like this, and I would tweak it next time, because it worked fine when the author of the quote was a well-known name such as Elisabeth Eliott, Corrie ten Boom, or Amy Carmichael, but it didn't work very well when the author's name was not well-known! So I had the ladies give the first letter or two of the first name, and we tried to guess that way. Jonathan suggested next time, to collect the clippings ahead of time and write the authors' names on the board and have them choose from those. Why didn't I have my brilliant husband along to help? Many thanks to the ladies for their patience!

Examples of quotes that were read: "...Just do the next thing..." Eliott

"The world is full of suffering; it is also full of the overcoming of it." Helen Keller

"It is okay to cry; but there comes a time when crying becomes self pity. Stop crying now." a lady from that area of SD

The team that guessed the most correct authors won postage stamps to put on their encouragement cards which I had set out in the back. Each lady was allowed to choose one to write in, using one or two of the favorite quotes if they liked, to send to someone who needed encouragement.

While I had that workshop, Crystal had organized a craft downstairs for the younger girls and young ladies--making Mother's Day cards for their mothers. When the little girls heard there was a craft, they came on the run. They had a blast. Here Crystal is holding one of the babies while three of the girls are finishing their crafts.

Saturday afternoon was the last workshop:

IV. (a) Seeing Christ through Dusty Windows 

(Some things that sometimes cloud our view or perspective of Christ)

    

I shared some poems I had written about finding God as a loving
Father instead of someone to fear.

(b )Seeing Christ through Open Windows 

For this one, I focused on how, while the devil wants us to focus on the fears, tragedies, and all kinds of negative things around us, God wants us to focus on Christ and the hope and victory He can give us over everything that comes our way. 

One way to focus on Him is to come to Him as a child, and children think in pictures rather than in written words. 

I shared about God giving both my husband and me a "picture" of Christ after going to Caring for the Heart when we were struggling over some issues in our lives. How God blessed both of us with a very real vision of Who Christ really was in our hurting places, Someone Who cared, Someone Who was a Safe Place.

For this workshop, I had collected various pictures which I discussed a bit and then passed around. 

Christ with a Light for a little girl

Christ holding a child by the hand

Christ's hand holding a little girl's hand

 A kind face looking down at a child

A lighthouse foundation in the midst of a storm

Afterward, if a picture had meant something to someone, they could come up and snap a photo of it.

Some of the ladies did, and two young girls came to me with a picture of Jesus that they had on a phone, one that they liked very much and had saved, because "his face was so kind."

That is exactly what I wanted them to think about--the kind face of our loving Savior. If all I accomplished there at the ladies' retreat was encouraging the ladies and girls to look into the kind face of our Savior, it was worth all the work and the travel and the hours of preparation. It was just a great, great time!