The Adventures of Patrick and the CC Ladies!

I am obsessed with blogging. I'll admit it. This is my sixth post in 3 days. I think I can officially label myself as a "blogger addict." (I could be addicted to much worse things, don'tcha think?) .... Alrighty ... well for my sixth post in the same weekend, I'm finally gonna post about a little guy that I introduced you to about a month ago. .... Yep, I'm talking about Patrick .... Patrick the Persimmon, whom I met (and helped create) at the Calvary Chapel Ladies Retreat last month. I've been meaning to post about him for a long time and haven't gotten around to it. Too many ideas rolling around in this brain, I think! ;) ... I was talking to a super great lady at my church this morning, Kelly Atkinson, who led the Calvary Ladies Retreat last month ... and she asked about my blog! Yeah! She said that someone told her about my Patrick post (Sweeet! Word is getting out about my blog!), and she wanted to check it out. So ... that clenched it! From that moment on, I was determined to finish my story about Patrick - today! So ... without further ado ... this is what Patrick and the ladies of Calvary Chapel did at the CC Ladies Retreat back in the middle of October. :) Get ready! This'll be the best thing you see all day! :D

This is where Patrick and the ladies spent the weekend ... a "quaint" little camp down in Oolitic, Indiana. :)

In case you haven't met Patrick (in case you missed my introduction of Patrick a month ago) ... This is Patrick the Persimmon ... the short version is that Patrick was created in a game that the CC ladies played on the retreat. Yep ... he is a persimmon with screw legs, pebble eyes, a pine mohawk, and he flies around on a wild turkey feather.

This is Patrick with our coolio speaker, Michelle Lampton. She is an extraordinary woman who has overcome crazy obstacles and all the while kept her eyes and heart stayed on her mighty Jesus! She talked to us about being "Beautiful Warriors" for Jesus ... and reminded us that no matter how tough our lives get, God is calling us to "stay at our posts." We are NOT to abandon the talents and callings and responsibilities and people God has placed in our lives! Great messages that weekend - fo sho!!! :D

Patrick and our worship leaders, Cheryl and Tiff! :) .... Worship must've been pretty impactful for Patrick because on the last morning of the retreat, someone wrote a ransom note for Patrick. No joke! Someone STOLE Patrick ..... but one of the ladies found him later with a note attached to him that said, "Take him back! He won't shut up! He keeps singing 'Jesus loves me' over and over and over!" So Patrick was returned to us. .... Yep. God can even impact a tiny little persimmon man.

We had lots of down time during our weekend getaway, and there were prayer stations set up all over the camp. Many of the ladies took several walks of silence and solitude throughout the weekend ... and some stopped at the prayer stations to focus on specific aspects of prayer. ..... Patrick also took some quiet time away with God, to read his Bible and pray. ;)

There was lots of time to fellowship on the retreat. We chatted for hours, played games together, broke up into small groups after sessions, and did "get to know you" activities. Patrick even made some friends ... Gilbert the Grape and Mr. Smiley. :)

We played a "get to know you" game on Friday night after everyone arrived. The idea was to take a handful of M&Ms, and for each M&M color, we shared different things about ourselves. Green M&Ms were our favorite foods, red M&Ms were our hobbies, orange were places we wanted to travel, brown - embarrassing moments, yellow - our favorite movies, and blue was anything scary/exciting/fun fact about ourselves that we wanted to share. .... And believe me! There were some pretty scary stories ... mostly about .... poop. ..... And you think I'm joking! I have never heard a group of people (a group of LADIES!) talk about poop as much as we did that weekend! No joke!!!!!!! We were worst than Jared Wade on a good night!!!! It was hilarious! (So much for being "ladies," huh?)! Ha ha ha!

It's too bad Patrick ended up eating all of his M&Ms ... we didn't find out much about him.

One of the yearly traditions at the retreat is cooking meals together. Saya, a super fun, mom-kind-of-figure in my life, and I cooked some amazing cinnamon french toast and tons of yummy sausage on Saturday morning. Patrick was pretty excited about cooking too ... except when we cracked jokes about persimmon pudding. ;)

Patrick and I agreed that sitting by the fire with all the ladies was one of the best parts of the weekend. It smelled like a campfire in the retreat lodge all weekend! (My favorite smell in the whole wide world!) .... It was ggrreeat! :D

Ha ha ha! Patrick the Persimmon. He was definitely the highlight of the ladies retreat for me. Heck! He's a persimmon man! If that isn't entirely hilarious and completely laid back (two things I LOVE being!), nothing is! And what made it so great is that every single lady on that ladies retreat ... all 17 or so of us, got a kick out of Patrick! EVERYONE joined in on the fun! Like I said earlier ... Jenny Freouf, a fantastically hilarious and fun woman from Calvary, decided to plot a kidnapping just to get me all worked up! Patrick was my little buddy, afterall. ;) It was hilarious! I think I can post the ransom notes here .... let me see. They are too hilarious! ...........

And the kidnapper pleading with us to take Patrick back ...........

It was entirely too much fun!!! Everyone on the trip played along with this crazy-fun ... well .... craziness! It was a blast! We laughed together! We worshipped together! We learned more about God together! We ate together! We talked together! We loved on each other TOGETHER! ..... Togetherness! ........ It was a really great time!

And many of you who read this blog .... you are Grace ladies. Don't ya think you all should join us next year??? With all the coolness of the amazing Grace ladies and the awesome Calvary ladies ... maybe we could make new fruit buddies next year! ;)

ENTIRELY TOO MUCH FUN! ..... Yay for Patrick the Persimmon and the Calvary ladies! :)