Connect Retreat 2016 | Recap

Words aren’t enough to express how we feel about this retreat. We are going to come out and say it, we were not expecting CONNECT retreat to be this good! We didn’t know what to expect, who we were going to meet, or what God was going to do! We thought that maybe we would just learn about business, or tips and tools for a healthy marriage and effective communication, but never did we imagine God was going to move in our hearts the way He did! We thought it was going to be a very traditional marriage retreat with a bunch of strangers and we were going to talk about our feelings to one another. But man oh man, we were SO wrong! And I’ve never been so glad to say that we were totally wrong. God exceeded our expectations and hopes for this retreat, and the way He touched us, rocked our world! Our relationship as a husband and wife bettered, we gained some awesome new friends, and met some of the most loving and humble people all within the timespan of 4 days. These are memories we will always cherish and moments we will never forget!

We landed in Atlanta on Monday morning and our friends Ryan and Alyssa picked us up from the airport! We drove the hour and a half to get to the Winshape Retreat Center on the campus of Barry University in Rome, Georgia. First of all, it is the most beautiful college campus I’ve ever seen and Winshape sits right at the top of a hill in the back. We were immediately greeted by the best welcoming committee and felt completely loved and at home. That same night we had our first session with Zach and Jody Gray in which I cried like a little baby from the moment worship started. After that we did a group game night and we laughed so hard playing these games! Tuesday was a full day with a morning session with Katelyn and Micheal, then fun group skill-building activities, and another afternoon session with Nathan and Jenny Oates, followed by a bonfire where we made s’mores and I came really close to a deer. All the while, I’m blubbering like a baby during every session and we are laughing with friends throughout all the games and downtime, total emotional roller coaster! The last full day was Wednesday and I was SO sad knowing it was almost over. We started out the day with a morning session with Amy and Jordan, followed by their awesome breakout session about finances, then we got all dressed up for photo swaps and a nice dinner. After dinner we had one more session with Jeff and Julia Woods, that I have to say was my favorite session, because they let God move and laid aside their own agendas! And boy did God move during that last night session, we cried, we prayed, and we cried some more. Not because of anything they said, but because God was truly pouring His presence out on us and touched our hearts in ways only He can.

Enough of my blabbering, I’ll let some of the pictures do the talking! Here is a recap of the amazing CONNECT Retreat!

First of all, let’s just admire this view from Winshape! Copperlily led worship all 4 days and it was wonderful! Not because they are industry leaders, but these two are our favorites! They are the most genuinely caring and humble people we’ve ever met and we admire them so much! And Amy and Jordan are exactly what they portray on social media, loving and kind! They really are as sweet as they seem and we can’t wait for our coaching session with them next month! Couple’s skill building :) We had to find our spouses but could only make animal noises! This was CONNECT Retreat’s version of dodgeball! Honestly, I’m not even sure what was happening here! Our group had a very challenging rope challenge in which we had to climb on a wire with our spouses and meet in the middle. Looked easy, but it was actually very hard! We loved our CONNECT Retreat shirts! All 64 couples!
The Rising Tide Society group :) And then on Wednesday afternoon we got to have these cuties in front of our cameras! This is Cinnamon and her husband Paul of Cinnamon Wolfe Photography and we LOVE them! They live in New Jersey and Cinnamon is one of the sweetest people we’ve ever met! We were so honored when she asked us to take pictures of her and Paul! I mean just look at how cute they are! LOVE this one! And then we switched and we jumped in front of their camera :) This was the spot where we had our nice dinner, just look at that view! Meet Ashesh and Jen! They were in our small group with 4 other couples and we immediately hit it off with them! They are SO sweet and we literally laughed until we cried with them. They asked us to take a few pictures and of course we said yes to our new friends :) LOVE! This is so them, always full of joy and laughter! That face Ashesh has on the left is priceless! Haha! And then they took some more of us :) And the best photo-bomb award goes to Luke and Ashley! I am so glad Ashesh and Jen kept clicking away while they photo bombed us! These pictures literally have us laughing out loud! Gosh, he makes a cute statue!
The last day we had a session in the morning where Copperlily sang a few of their songs and they opened up the floor to let couples share their testimony from the retreat! We heard so many wonderful stories and even got to share a little bit ourselves! And then we spent the rest of the morning finding all our favorite people and taking some pictures with all of them! :) And we got our very own #demossandwhich! It’s funny how God does things! We met Luke and Ashley (the couple all the way to the right) because we had coaching sessions on the same day with Katelyn and Micheal! Never would we have thought that they would become some of our favorite people and we were so glad we were able to spend some more time with them during CONNECT! This was our awesome small group! There’s such a funny story with this lacrosse ball! We literally cried from how hard we laughed that night! This girl right here, she is truly one of a kind and SO special! We are honored to know her and can truly say that she has greatly influenced our lives and business! This retreat was the first time we heard of these two and we absolutely LOVED Nathan and Jenni and what they spoke about during their session!
Ok so funny story about this picture! All the leaders got together for a group photo but no one had a professional camera. I happened to be taking a picture of someone else using Alyssa’s Canon camera (I shoot Nikon, so the settings on a Canon are foreign to me) Then they called me over to take a picture of them (no pressure right?) and thankfully everyone came out in focus! Haha! 

This retreat impacted us, moved us, and stirred our hearts! We are SO thankful that God allowed us to go to this retreat, so much so that we already signed up for next years CONNECT 2017!! We can’t wait to reunite with all our new and old friends and see what God will do next year!