GEM France Retreat

The end of October always takes us into the mountains for 5 days of retreating with our GEM France family.  Some years the focus is on spiritual development; sometimes it's more focused on strategic planning; other times, like this year, it's a mix.  In any case, we always enjoy our time at Camp des Cimes with friends and colleagues who live all over France that we typically only see a few times throughout the year.

Photo Credit:  Andrea Heath

Judah was a champ.  He handled the large crowd, noise and lots of in-your-face attention really well.  

We prayed for a baby who would adapt easily; God has answered our prayers!

My friend Annemieke was sure to catch a few of my "mom moments" throughout Judah's first retreat. ;)

Judah loves sleeping in the ergo-carrier, which is pretty practical.  

Can you spot him peeking out from my napkin?

This is a traditional photo with our dear friends, Micah and Andrea Heath.  

The first year (2013) it was just the 4 of us [visible].  Their son, Noah, joined us in 2014.  Judah made his appearance this year, and in 2017 Baby Heath #2 will be there. Their friendship is a true blessing!

And of course there is the traditional talent show evening.  

This was a bedtime story/rap of The Cat in the Hat with Micah, Zach and Simone.

For the last few years I've done a weekly Skype call with Emily and Annemieke for a Spiritual Friendship group.  The current book we are reading, Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God by Gary Thomas, talks about different ways to connect with God.  A few weeks ago we read a chapter talking about the five senses, and we decided to spend time together creating prayer beads, with each bead [that we touch] representing something to pray for regularly.  It was a fun way to spend time together - face to face rather than over a computer - and to think through tangible ways we can connect with God.

While I was with Emily, Annemieke and others who joined us to make prayer beads, Jordan was out taking family photos for people.  This one time I caught him in action.

Camp des Cimes (Camp of the Peaks) is about 2 hours from our house in Aix-les-Bains.  It's really beautiful, and we are thankful for the nice weather we had this year.  A team from Houston came to help care for the kids, and teams from New Jersey and Germany came to help serve the food and clean (all supporting churches of our colleagues as well as fellow GEMers).  We were gifted with a professional chef who lives in France for the purpose of serving missionaries - yum!