Spring Retreat at Alton Bay, New Hamphire (Lake Winnapausakee)

This weekend I had the privilege of going with our church to the annual New Believer's Retreat. The location for this year changed. We use to go to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts. This year we went to Alton By, New Hampshire. The camp was right on Lake Winnapausakee. It was beautiful! And the accommodations were great. It wasn't campy at all. The room David and I stay was like a hotel room. They even had the little shampoo bottles and the little soaps and all the stuff that you find in a regular hotel. I was so happy. I'm not a camper ....you know, the kind where the accommodations have spiders...bugs....and mattress that are either too thin or too small!!!. We had in our room two full size bed with awesome mattress!

Well, we had a Holy Ghost Revival at all 4 services. Lisa Kemp was our guest speaker. She is awesome. She comes from Florida. She is a Psalmist and a preacher. Boy was the Word of God spoken clearly!!!!!!!

During the day on Saturday we had a break from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. It was hot on Saturday and some of us decided to go canoing. In one canoe it was, David and Arleen Carrasquillo and me. David and Arleen were paddling and I was in the middle. We started out at the bay....which was nice and serene, sort of... like a lagoon. We got to the end of the lagoon and decided to venture out to the other side of the lake which was vast and the water is a little bit choppier. We were doing just find. We decided to stay pretty close to the edge trying to avoid the speed boats, ski jets...etc. Arleen was getting tired of paddling so we decided to paddle to the pier where we could exchange.....(me paddling back) About 20 feet away from the pier David's phone rang (yes, David and I forgot we had our phones in our pockets!), and he picks it up. Both Arleen and I started telling him to get off the phone because we were heading for some rocks. At this point Arleen yells..."David, get off the phone...we're going to crash." David gets off the phone and steers us away from the rocks when a wake comes our way from a motor boat and rocks us. At the same moment I decided that my tush was numb and so I shifted my weight a little bit...well that's all it took! Before we knew it we were underwater.....lol...lol. (yes, we had our life jackets on). Arleen and I started laughing so hard and David was livid. We couldn't stop laughing...none of us had our bathing suits on. Arleen had long paints on and sneakers. David had his bathing suit on but forgot to take his sneakers off. I had cotton shorts with a cotton t-shirt and my flip flops. When we hit the water it was a shock to our system....the water was cold!! But then it felt good because it cooled off our body. All of sudden I realized my "bejeweled" flip flops were floating away and I swam after them. Then I spotted David's sneakers and went after them. In the meantime, David is yelling...."forget about the sneakers, go after the oar." Arleen went to get the oar because my hands were full with my "bejeweled" flip flops and David's sneakers. Once were were back at the canoe, David had flipped it over but it was full of water. I don't know what happened to Arleen and I, but we decided to get back in the canoe. When we climbed in.....the water was up to our waist. Needless to say, David looked at us in disbelief....he said "do you think you two are going to get anywhere with water in the canoe." Arleen and I jumped back off and by this time we were laughing so hard we could'nt even help David get the water out of the canoe and flip it upright. I told Arleen....."you better swim away from me because I'm getting ready to pee from laughing so hard. David finally told us to compose ourselves because he needed help. We finally got all the water out and got back in the canoe. I decided to paddle back with David and Arleen was in the middle soaked....she had jeans and sneakers. She looked like a wet puppy.

We started back to the bay.....still laughing but feeling good because we were cooled down from the heat. When we got back to the bay. We had a whole crowd waiting for us, not knowing what had happen and wondering what was taking us so long in coming back. As we got closer they notice sometime was wrong. Then we hear the roar of laughter when they saw Arleen's hair flat and wet.....we felt the "love" so strongly *sarcastic*.

We had such a good time relaying the experience to all our brothers and sisters in Christ. It was the highlight of the trip. We laughed for a good hour!!!

We had such a wonderful time with the Lord. During each service God spoked and moved in such a special way. We were able to praise the Lord freely....sing freely....dance freely. We had a Holy Ghost festival. Everyone that went was ministered to in a special way. David and I needed this retreat so badly. We have been pretty busy at church, especially ministering to the youth the past 7 1/2 months. It felt good to be back on a spiritual "full tank". On Saturday night we had a bonfire and we threw all our petitions and everything we had given to God this weekend. The theme was Surrender and not fearing what God has for us! We wrote on a piece of paper our worst fears and what we needed to surrender to him and threw it in the fire as a symbol of surrender....HALLELULAH!!!

I've uploaded this video which I took at one of the services just to give you a taste of the wonderful revival we had!