Ladies' Retreat Reflections

This past weekend, over fifty women traveled to the Cape to attend this year's ladies' retreat with Mrs. Susan Hunt. A lot of prayer and planning went into this milestone event. For today's blog, I asked Mrs. Ellen Capozzi to write, on behalf of the Ladies' Retreat Planning Team, their impressions of all that occurred last weekend. Here it is:

Our ladies' retreat this year with Susan Hunt was indeed a life-changing event! We learned from God'sWord about our role as women in our homes and in our church.

In Session One, Mrs. Hunt taught us about The Legacy of Biblical Womanhood. We learned that there is headship and submission in the Trinity, just as God has ordained it to be in marriage and in the church. It is a beautiful principle when rightly understood.

In Session Two, we learned about The Proverbs 31 Man and Woman. Proverbs 31 points to Jesus, as does all of Scripture. Mrs. Hunt instructed us not to turn a passage loose until Jesus shows us Himself. Our retreat theme was verses 30 and 31: "...a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her of thefruit of her hands, and let her works praise her inthe gates." When we fear God we submit to His rule asKing because we trust Him, even when it seems hard. The LORD is God's personal covenant name. It reveals His personal relationship with us for all eternity. We are His, and He is ours! As we submit to His rule,He transforms us.

Session Three was about Titus 2 - the importance of having Godly character and sound doctrine, and the mandate for older women to teach younger women to love their husbands and children, with the Gospel as our motivation and our power.

During Session Four on Sunday morning, we learned from Psalm 62 that we can trust God at all times because He is strong and He is loving. We learned from Luke 24 that when ourhearts are slow to believe God's promises we are sad. We learned that all Scripture is about Jesus, and that He enables us to understand it. When we see Him, ourhearts are aflame (on fire!). From 2 Timothy welearned of the influence of Timothy's mother and grandmother, even though his father was not a believer.

Our time together ended with a time of personal sharing by several women. Love for the Lord and eachother was overflowing. The teaching that we received this weekend wastruly rich. We are grateful to God for allowing us this time together. We are grateful to Susan Hunt for her loving ministry and example to us, and to our church family for their prayers that went up to God on our behalf. Thank you to our husbands who encouragedus to go and who "held down the fort" till we returned. Last, but not least, thank you to our pastor who lovingly watches over our souls and who labors in the Word week in and week out to build us up in the faith. "To whom much is given, much is required." -- May we rise up as women to fulfill our role as helpers and life-givers, by the grace of God and for His glory!

Having heard the impressions of our Ladies' Retreat Planning Team, I wanted to close by sharing a portion of an e-mail that Susan Hunt sent to one of the Team members after returning home from the retreat:

I hope you are resting and enjoying knowing that you did a great job! The retreat was wonderful. You and the committee cared for me and for the women with such love and grace . . . it was a great encouragement to me to be there. Please thank all of the women for enfolding me in love. Gene and I loved being with you. . . .

It's good to be home, and we brought with us special memories of special people. We prayed this morning that the Lord will use it all for His glory and to accomplish His purposes in the women and in your church.

To Him be all glory,
Susan

We would love to hear more feedbacks from you ladies who went on the retreat. Or perhaps there are some of you men who would like to say a word about your wives. Leave a comment, sharing how you've been encouraged!