Christmas retreat-Jo

Imagine, please, a Friday evening on 17th December. The country is covered with light, freshly fallen snow, chilly and dark outside and you are sitting next to the fireplace, sipping the warm tea, watching flames jumping from one log to another, chatting with friends who are around you and playing funny games. Do you think it is an idealistic image? Let me just tell you that it is. This is how the Christmas retreat began. People from all over the country and from abroad gathered here at Brettargh Holt to look behind our personal Advent and to spend some time focusing on what is the real meaning of Advent and Christmas. People from Manchester, Liverpool, Kendal, Birmingham, Preston and many other places around the UK came together to spend some time in community, quietness and to do good thing to others. The Christmas retreat is usually connected with raising money for Bretta´s project but this year we’d decided to split the money raised with another charity- Dunmail Day Hospital in Kendal.

Friday night was as usually full of games, teambuilding activities, preparation of the banner (which was the nicest banner I’ve ever seen, thank you Sophie, Zoe, Catherine and Heather), decorating the musical instruments (hard work which Ben, Alana and Jo handled) and music practice. After that we had a lovely evening prayer with the good night from Rachel.

What a beautiful view it was, when we looked out on the fields hidden under the bright white snow. Does it sound romantic? Well, maybe for you but not for Sr. Valerie. Her sad face didn’t correspond with our joyful hearts, so we decided to do something useful and before we fed our bodies we did a little bit of exercise- shovelling the thick snow layer away from the road. When everybody was happy we continued in basic everyday activities- morning prayer and breakfast. This was followed by an unforgettable singing practice. We left the house and arrived at the K village Shopping centre where we raised money for this year’s charity. Although it was freezing outside, we had a lovely time together, full of laughter, Christmas songs and the joy of the people waiting for the coming Birth of our Saviour. Especially touching was the joy we shared with the families and watched children dance along to our not always tuneful singing!

After that we arrived home and spent some time together to warm ourselves near the fire and share the happy moments from the day.

Because we had a lack of physical activities, salesians Martin and Sandy decided to fill this part. We helped them to unload furniture from their lorry. This was the best opportunity for us to see the new kind of furniture we were going to have at Bretta. During the moving of the furniture, we, volunteers had a very good opportunity to think about which pieces of furniture would be the most suitable for our rooms and after the unloading we had a competition GRAB ME A.S.A.P.

We closed the day in the chapel with evening prayer and with a cup of warm chocolate that Alana made. Because it is not always the best idea to look on Alana when she is working, we made up our mind and watched the new Nativity film which helped us to get deeper into the Christmas spirit.

Next morning was sad because we realized we would spend just a couple of hours together. We had known this so we had asked Paul to help us overcome that and he did. He prepared unbelievable traditional British cooked breakfast which made me enormously happy when I saw all that food in front of me. This lovable session was followed by another superb occasion called Holy Mass which was the best full stop after our Amazing Christmas Retreat 2010.

Thank you very much for the friendly moments we spent together and I hope next year we will meet again with the same people and of course with you ;-)

C U guys at Bretta.

Jo (SVK) :o)