Story by Ruth Smith/Photos from Beth Wagner and Ruth Smith
Twenty PAW ladies had a weekend retreat at the Sharp’s Cabin along Route 104 just outside of Middleburg. The cabin features two full kitchens, four bathrooms, five bedrooms with sleeping capacity for 30 plus with a large dinging room and living areas including a full basement recreation room. On-site activities at the cabin included ping pong, walking trails through the woods and around the two acre lake, kayaking, paddle boarding, paddle boat and fire pit.
The weekend started out Friday evening with a power outage and loss of cell phone services for most of the ladies. These hearty ladies pulled together and cooked over a wooden cook stove and hauled buckets of water from the lake to flush toilets. The cabin was illuminated by candlelight and flashlights that evening while many new friendships were being formed and strengthening of old friendship were being made. Lots of great memories were made that night including a hilarious mishap from two girls who went to the wrong house and burst in shouting “we are here for the retreat!”, traumatizing the unsuspecting family. Thinking their secret was safe, they quickly retreated to their cars and went to he next house/cabin. Unbeknownst to them, our dear pastor’s wife ran into the traumatized family at the end of the driveway and they told the whole story.
Saturday, the ladies did three crafts led by Nicole Walter, and participated in two outreach ministry opportunities. In the afternoon they went into Middleburg and did some crafts with the women and the kids at the women’s shelter. A good deal of time was spent talking and hearing their stories. When leaving each person received a special gift from the PAW women. The PAW ladies plan on doing a dry goods food drive at the Thursday night Bible study 3/22/18 to help stock the shelter’s pantry. The second ministry opportunity was a spontaneous God given idea to food prep the complete funeral meal for Beth Freed’s mother, Kathryn Thomas, that was scheduled for that upcoming Monday. Due to Kathryn’s death, both Rose Womer and Beth Freed could not make the retreat, and Nicole Walter was only able to make part of Saturday’s activities.
Sunday’s devotion was the first installment of a 7-week Bible study on James with Beth Moore. We had weekend prayer partners where we wrote down a heavy anonymous prayer request on a card and swapped them around. No identifiers were given, but you knew a strong blanket of prayer was placed on those concerns during the weekend. Gods presence was very real, and there were many Satan attempts at attacking the weekend. “Free time” was filled with playing games (including a hilarious game of twister in which pictures will forever be banned from public view), paddle boating, windy walks and heartfelt talks about life and genuine struggles.
The food was conservatively described as phenomenal! Boasting everything being homemade (or very nearly) and incredibly fresh.
