Students in the upper grades at Spokane Junior Academy (SJA) headed to Camp MiVoden, Hayden Lake, Idaho, for a spiritual retreat focused on bringing students closer to God and to each other.
The weekend retreat’s topic, “So, Change My Perspective,” was an acronym for different personality types (sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic). Jodie Foster, South Hill Church youth pastor and retreat speaker, used Bible verses to identify the traits of the twelve disciples and showed how God relates to everyone according to who they are.
On Friday evening, students were tested for personality type and then separated into four groups, one for each personality. An array of activities during the weekend clearly pointed out the differences between each group. It was fascinating to see how each group handled the same concepts, such as acting out the same Bible story, drawing a picture of a park, or writing a song. These were used to show how much each personality differed in thinking processes and in relationship to each other.
A candlelit agape feast consisting of fruit, soup, bread, and other light foods was held on Friday night, followed by communion. This peaceful and spiritually uplifting evening ended with time to share our thoughts of what significance communion had for us.
Throughout Sabbath, we made many discoveries about each other and ourselves through more personality activities. After sundown we had time for swimming, games, and a Hawaiian survivor tournament. The highlight of the competition was the survival food relay. Each team member ran and tried to eat a certain unusual food as fast as possible. Some of the foods included baby food, lemon juice, dried seaweed, and half a mayonnaise, peanut butter, jam, mustard and ranch dressing sandwich.
Sunday was to be a snow day, but because of the lack of snow, the sponsors scheduled games, a ping-pong tournament and swimming in the MiVoden pool. That evening we were treated to a terrific Hawaiian dinner prepared by Kathy Craft, SJA secretary. The delicacies included scallops in sweet and sour sauce, tropical drinks and cheesecake.
By Monday morning it was time to pack up and leave. The hard work put in by Foster, the Associated Student Body (ASB) officers and the teachers paid off in many memories made and friendships grown, both with God and each other.
The weekend spiritual retreat included personality testing, an agape feast and plenty of social time.
