the fifth one about montreat (part 2): candlelight

This year was my third and final year at Montreat. It’s been a great week. I’ve had a wonderful small group full of amazing people. We’ve had great keynoters and worship leaders. The keynotes and sermons all hit home with us on some level. The theme, as probably mentioned earlier this week was “throw open the doors”. We had sub themes that included doors of possibilities and doors to the church. We talked about things including the importance of holding each other and being held up ourselves, and just the importance of love overall. We learned so many new songs this week. At first we were all a little disappointed that the songs we had all loved for so long weren’t being played. By today though we had learned the new songs and have come to love most of them.

I waited until tonight to blog because tonight was the candle light service. It’s my favorite part of the week. At the end of the service on the final night everyone gathers around Lake Susan. We get candles as we file out of Anderson Auditorium and completely circle the lake. It’s so beautiful. We light the candles and sing a lot of the slower songs from the week. It has always been a really powerful and emotional night for me. Tonight was more emotional night than past years though because it was my final night at the high school conference. It was a combination of happy and sad. I was sad to be leaving, but happy to have had such a great experience both this week and at conferences in the past. Although, I did learn tonight at devotion that there is the possibility of coming back to be part of work crew next year. There is also a college conference in January.

Another great thing about this week was that I was able to see some of my friends from PYC for the first time since our final meeting, and I also got to see some of the people that I had met last year. Montreat has always been something I’ve looked forward to. It has been an amazing week: as amazing, if not more so, than I had expected. The group of us are so lucky to have each other. We have heard so many stories about youth groups that have people that constantly feel left out of their groups. I feel really lucky to be a part of Gooth where we don’t have that problem. I’m going to miss these experiences when I leave in August. I do, however, feel more ready than I did to leave. Parts of the conference helped me to feel this way. The day we talked about the doors of possibilities I talked about going to college with another graduated senior about our reservations about growing up and moving out. It helped me when I realized I wasn’t the only one with these reservations. It’s been such a great week and I can’t believe it went by as fast as it did.

Love, Brittany

the sixth one about nyc: the free day

folks, friday was our “free day” to spend in manhattan. we had a blast, but it was a long, tiring day. we left at 7:45am and returned around 9:45pm. it’s late, and i don’t have time to really describe our adventures tonights, but i will do so later this week when i return from vacation. check back wednesday night for an update. i will also post my final reflections on the week later this week…hopefully by wednesday night.

here are two final reflections from 3 GOOTH about their experiences this week. hannah and sarah made some deep connections and conclusions that they shared with the group thursday night…which inspired our emotional devotion that night. they decided to write a blog entry together. i will blog more about it from my point of view in my final reflection, because even though it was not the last night, it was our “final” devotion for the week and we couldn’t top it friday night, so we didn’t try!

Sarah Hoyle (9th grade) and Hannah Platt (College Freshman)

This week has been an amazing experience for the both of us. We worked in a group together with three other youth and two adults. Although riding on all the ferries, subways, and walking everywhere was tiring, the work we did proved to be worthwhile; not only for us, but the people we helped. Working in soup kitchens and food pantries opened our eyes to the world outside of Clemmons. While the two of us helped line people up outside a soup kitchen on the last day, we came to the conclusion that these people we were feeding were more than just those homeless people we’d been seeing on the street. They had names. What was once that random person you saw sleeping on a bench became the Johns, Pauls, and Davids that walked through that door. We also came to the realization that we aren’t doing enough back home in Clemmons. Helping feed over 7,000 people here in New York showed the two of us how much a group of teenagers that get along how much we can accomplish. It’s not hard to help out in soup kitchens and if you’re working with people that you’ve become so close to, the time flies by and you don’t want to leave. GOOTH has grown so much this week; with each other and in our faith.

Brittany McGowan (college freshman)

This week has really opened my eyes as well as many others of the members of GOOTH this week. I spent my time on Manhattan and every day I went, along with 4 other youth and 2 adults. I went to different sites in many different boroughs throughout the week. I spent two days at two different soup kitchens, and two days at food pantries. On Monday I helped to serve lunch to the different people. The one thing that stuck out to me while there was that we served everyone like it was a restaurant. It helped us to actually be able to interact with these people. It made them more real to us than just faces. Another day that stuck out to me was Thursday’s trip to a food bank. We helped to bag food that would be given out to the people coming through later that day. When everyone got to the food bank we helped to hand out the food. We were encouraged to not only hand out the food but interact with the people. We were told to talk to at least say good morning and smile. Not only did I feel like we all benefitted a lot of people here, I also feel like our group itself was benefitted. We learned about a lot. One thing that was mentioned several times was that homeless people are not the only hungry people. Hungry was defined as those people who cannot afford to provide a healthy meal for themselves on a regular basis. We also learned a lot about each other as we spent time in groups with people we did not normally see on a regular basis. We have become stronger as a group. While we were here for others, we also ended up helping ourselves. It has over all been a very rewarding experience, and while I’m happy to be coming home to see everyone I am really going to miss everyone here and the bond that we have created.