This past weekend we held our first Middle School only retreat. At the beginning of 2012, I decided I wanted to do both, a high school and middle school only retreat, in addition to our Spring and Fall ADVANCE! After this weekend, I am so thankful we made this decision to add these two new retreats this year. Let me share with you a few of the things I learned during Middle School Madness.

1. Middle school students will sing out even when the high school students aren’t around. The singing we enjoyed was amazing for such a small group. We are  use to having 75 people help us sing and praise God. This weekend we have only 15 and it was some great singing.
2. Snakes really do bite people when you mess with them. No worries, none of the kids were bitten, only one of the adults who was handling the snake. It was nothing serious, it just broke the skin and caused minor bleeding. BTW…the snake handling, is not what you are probably thinking, the snake was capture inside the girls cabin.
3. Middle school students don’t appreciate someone jumping out of the woods dressed as a gorilla late at night. We all had a good laugh about this after the kids calmed down.
4. Playing Apples to Apples with Middle School students is great fun. We played this simple game for over 2 1/2 hours and had a blast. It’s funny to see how young people associate certain things.
5. Middle School students are up for anything. We played several crazy games but my favorite was broom hockey. Watching the students get into this game and have fun with it was an incredible experience.
6. When you are hanging with middle school students, be prepared to have weird/silly conversations. Some of the things we talked about, had no point whatsoever, but we had a blast talking about it anyway.
7.  I work with an awesome group of middle school students. This weekend just reinforced what I already knew, this group of students has the potential to be really special. I’m looking forward to working with them and watching them continue to grow in their walk with the Lord.

Our first annual Middle School Madness was a success. The kids and adults all seemed to enjoy themselves and we learned the truth about the awesome God we served. I’m thankful to God for blessing us with an incredible weekend.

Now that’s Something to Think About!