Day 1- Traveling and the First session

Dave and I left our house at 3:30 am on Thursday morning. We left with the rest of the team around 4:15 to get to the airport. Our flights were with Alan the whole way, but the rest of them was split up on different flights. We hopped a short flight to Cincinnati to await our long flight to Seattle.

Unfortunately, this was the morning of the FAA glitch. If you hadn't heard about it...that Thursday their system that records flight plans failed. Then their back-up system failed. They were trying to file flight plans by phone and fax. Needless to say, it caused a huge ruckus in the day's plans. Fortunately, our flight was only delayed about an hour (small compared to what the rest of the day looked like for flyers I'm sure).


We arrived in Seattle just in time to catch up with the rest of the guys who had been waiting awhile. We climbed in our rental and drove to Blue Sky where we met up with Steve. We got on the ferry headed over the sound to Whidbey island, where the retreat was being held. Another first for me: I had never been on a ferry with cars. It was only a 15 minute ride over there. Unfortunately, it was raining, so we didn't see much...except a seal. That was pretty cool. :-)


We were all exhausted by the time we got there. We had been traveling for about 12 hours at that point. Originally, Dave and I were to stay in a cabin with some other couples (since we were the only couple there). They dropped us off and we found this HUGE black spider where we were staying. Wonderful. A few minutes after Dave and I got settled, Tony called us and told us there was room for us in the farm house they were staying in. We decided to go so we could be closer to the team (and perhaps there wouldn't be as many spiders...) I'm glad we did.





It was beautiful. Intricate woodwork. A pass-through in the kitchen. Beautiful staircase. Just gorgeous.

The first session was a bit hard for all of us. It was starting at 7pm Seattle time, which is 10pm our time. I was exhausted by the end of it. I was a tad melancholy and really wanted prayer myself to be filled up enough to be able to pour out through the weekend. For some reason, I just wanted God to use someone to touch me in a profound way. That was my prayer as I went to bed that night...