We left our ministry site on Friday morning after being there for just a few days to head to Granada, Nicaragua for a leadership retreat. This is our second one (we also had on in Guatemala) and they are designed mainly as a time for leaders to get together and have trainings and sessions together with our squad leaders. Since the leaders are all gone, the rest of the squad gets a weekend of rest. Shayna and I are dubbed "in charge of the squad". We kind of wrangle people and get them to their appropriate hostel, appoint people to handle food, water and other aspects of living together as 45 people.
While we were in Granada, my squad mates were spread out across 4 hostels (3 for the squad and 1 for the leaders). It was tough to get everyone on the same page and didn't really work very well for us. We weren't really able to plan sessions or have quality squad time because of space limitations so it was kind of a chaotic weekend.
I did, however, get my time of "rest" in over the weekend. On Saturday, I rented a motorcycle along with Bryan and Christopher, Bryan and I set of to find Laguna de Apoyo.
We had heard that this was a beautiful lake inside a crater of a volcano. We heard that it was the most clear body of water in all Central America and we heard that it was absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. AND IT IS!
We hung out at the lake for a solid hour. Rode around as much of the lake as we could and then swam around a little while. We enjoyed the warm water and beautiful views. We sat on the shore for a while and just soaked in God's majesty and the fact that he created all of this beauty for us to enjoy! We are so blessed!
After the squad left on Sunday, Shayna and I stayed behind to work on finding a location that would work for our debrief at the end of the month. We went to several different hotels and hostels praying that one of them would be big enough for 60 people. We started to get discouraged when we starting realizing that all the places big enough for all of us were expensive hotels. We found one place called La Floresta that would house 43 of us. It was pretty perfect with a big courtyard and nice seating for sessions. We talked with them and they said they could lodge 43 of us and provide food for all 60 of us. We were thankful for God showing this place to us! We found another hostel about a block and a half away that had room for the other 17 and thought that work well.
Overall it was a successful weekend and very restful and successful. We got to spend a day with Seth Jr, our squad leader that was going home a few days after retreat, which was super awesome.
