Halftime at the Bishop’s Retreat

We are at the halfway point at the 2010 Bishop’s Retreat of the Central Pennsylvania Conference of The United Methodist Church.

We arrived at the retreat, which is taking place at the Willow Valley Resort in Lancaster, PA. Last year, our first time to attend the annual retreat, we came a day early to get settled in and to relax (we also posted some learnings from the retreat).

This year, we chose not to come a day early because we were concerned about how well Sarah would sleep here. We figured two nights would be better than three, at this point (although next year, I think we’ll come early; it’s more relaxing). We did arrive in town a few hours early to shop at the outlets before checking into our room just in time for the opening meal (followed by the evening session).

Ethan was with us last year, too, and this year, it’s a first for Sarah. Ethan hasn’t always handled being dropped off at child care in these kinds of “strange” gatherings very well, but we were hoping that having Sarah (a familiar face) with him would make things easier this time. Such was not the case. Last night, as we arrived at the door to the child care room, we experienced his worst ever response (too bad I didn’t have the video camera ready :-)). I had to chase him (while he cried loudly) down the hallway. I caught up to him at one of the exits. Of course, he continued to cry until shortly after we left. He was fine then and had a good time. This morning, we experienced a much less eventful drop-off, leaving two more drop-offs to go (this evening and tomorrow morning).

Since this is a “retreat,” we get Tuesday afternoons off. For us, that means trying to get the kids to take a nap. We gave up with Ethan and Joleen took him to the pool (which caught up to him later; see photo below). Fortunately, Sarah, who did not get much sleep last night (she went to sleep very late and woke up very early), had a good (up to) hour-and-a-half nap.

Last year, Ethan’s favorite spot was the fountain (which Ethan calls “mountain”). That’s still true this year. This morning, on the way to dropping him off at child care, we stopped at the fountain for a quick look. When we got to the child care room, he immediately started telling the child care workers, and everyone else, about the fountain (and how the water goes “up the pipes,” something I had explained to him yesterday).

Well, I’ll say more about what we’re learning from Gil Rendle, the speaker at this retreat, a little later. For now, I’ll simply say, there’s a lot of good stuff on leading change to chew on. Both the communication and the content are very good.

Here are some images from today …

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