Sarah Choe
To say that the retreat was amazing is not enough. The lyrics from Broken Vessels ‘I can see you now/ I can see the love in your eyes’ reminds me of the last night at the retreat. While everyone shared and prayed for each other I could see God’s love through them. This retreat was so effective because our Hi-C was able to make real connections. Everyone feels so much closer than before because of how deeply they care for each other. I can’t properly put the feelings into words but the Hi-C feels whole now that everyone is so much closer. Personally, I learned a lot from Simon’s message. Realizing that God has a plan for all aspects of my life was a big change. The overwhelming responsibility and stress that comes with depending entirely on myself was lifted and I felt so much relief. However, as the school year begins I can tell that it will come back. I pray that I can continue to be conscious of God’s presence in my life. I’m so proud of how much we learned this retreat. I feel so much love from, and for, every single member of the Hi-C. As one of our newest and youngest members said ‘you could take every good adjective in the dictionary and apply it to the Hi-C’.
Jocelyn Chung
Hi-C outings are always an amazing time of fellowship, but this past retreat was an entirely different experience for me personally. As a leader of such a tight-knit community, I, along with the other execs put an incredible amount of pressure and burden on myself, along with guilt when I was unable to deliver as expected. Surprisingly, thanks to this heaviness we all felt leading up to, and throughout the whole retreat, it turned out to be the most meaningful and beautiful one yet. I learned to leave things up to God, and trust that he would guide me, rather than attempting to take total control over my own life. Because of this, I truly believe that this past retreat was the best we’ve ever had. The connection and closeness we all felt with one another was so incredibly overwhelming, we couldn’t help but to be brought to tears. The deep and genuine love we all have for each other is so apparent you can almost feel it. We have always felt this love towards one another but our experience at the retreat solidified that extremely special place we all hold in each other’s hearts. Even now, over a week post-retreat, I still feel an emptiness when I’m away from my family for too long. I thank God everyday for blessing me with such a community that I love and care for so much. Thank you to Simon, all of the execs, the team leaders, and the counsellors for making this the best retreat yet. I love you all.
Paul Jang
This years retreat was definitely the best one I have been to so far! I am extremely proud of our Hi-C for being able to not only share but open up to one another. What made this retreat different was that it wasn’t just the leaders but a collective effort from all of the Hi-C’s to connect with each other. You can try as hard you want but to really connect, the conversation has to be two-sided. I realized in the same way this is very similar to how our relationship with God works. We can pray all we want, and we can feel frustrated when we usually don’t get an answer back right away, but when God does reveals himself to us, it is the most beautiful thing. I believe that this is what happened this year at the retreat: we set high expectations for ourselves, and when things didn’t go as planned we became stressed out and felt a lot of pressure. But, it is when we were at our weakest and felt like breaking down, that God chose to reveal himself to us. I really do not think we changed our approach in trying to open up to each other, but rather, God worked through each of us to push us out of our comfort zones to bring us closer. Everything that happened at the retreat, including the struggles and failures was a part of God’s plan, and realizing this took away a lot of the fears I had going into my final year of high school.
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