Every kid who was a part of a youth group in the church growing up has been on these magical little trips where you are forced to hang out with your youth group maybe for hours, days, or even weeks. What are these things called? Youth retreats. Some of the craziest things can happen on these little adventures... things that you definitely never want to talk about again once you come home from the retreat. But alas, they happen, and it has happened to us all. And now that we're older and time has passed, it is now an acceptable time to laugh about everything that has happened...
1. Everybody falls in love with everybody.
Pretty much this is one of the worst things that happens on a youth retreat. You are hanging out with someone in your youth group for a couple days and all the sudden you think to yourself "I wonder what it would be liked to date them" and from there it's game over. You spend the rest of the retreat hanging out with them and only them, texting them constantly, talking to your best friends in your youth group about them, ect. And then when you get home... either your little love affair completely dies or it lasts a couple weeks and slowly fades off. Very rarely do youth group retreat relationships actually work and 99.9% of the time they are a horrible idea... but yet, everyone does it.
2. There's really weird games.
Playing games at youth retreats typically makes you ask yourself "who actually thought of this game?" Llama Llama, Steal the Bacon, Lizard Detective, Crab Soccer, and so many different card games that you lose count and wonder if some of them were made up simply just on the spot. But yet...these weird games are some of the most fun games you have ever played.
3. No purpling.
You can get a crush on whoever you want, but don't even think about making any moves on them. No holding hands, no full-frontal hugs (unless of course it's just a friendly one after they gave their life to Jesus at the alter or something) and definitely no kissing - are you crazy?
4. The overly emotional one:
There's always someone in the youth group who cries at every single thing that happens during the retreat. Guest speaker's sermon? Cries. Communion? Cries. A time to pray with your youth group? Cries. The band plays a slow song? Cries. No pieces of cake left at dinner? Cries. There's always someone who is really emotional at church retreats... maybe that someone was you.
5. The person who starts drama:
There is always someone who comes on the retreat just looking for a fight. 99 percent of the time, they'll drag someone else into it and the whole retreat will be about keeping those two away from each other so they don't beat the absolute Jesus into each other.
6. Walking into the boys' room...
Going in to tell the boys that it's time for them to start getting ready for dinner? You better bring a gas mask in with you and a water gun just filled with Febreze. Why does it always smell like someone died in their room?
7. The car ride
There is a whole different cast of characters in the car to and from youth retreats. There's the one who is always sleeping, the one who gets way too into the music and tries to show off that they can sing better than anyone else, the one who had way too much candy before getting in, the one who is car sick, the one trying to create choreography to all the songs, the one who hates everyone in the car, the one who is just on their phone the whole time, the one who ignores everyone and listens to their own iPod instead, the one who has to pee every 15 minutes, the one who is hungry and asks to stop every time we pass a McDonald's, the one who complains the whole time, the "are we there yet?" one, and of course the poor adult who was forced to drive all these crazy kids.
8. The sweet merchandise
T-shirts, bandanas, hats, bracelets, necklaces, teddy bears, bags - youth retreats always have the coolest merchandise and that is usually where you end up spending most of your money.
9. Getting really sick of your youth group at some point.
There was some point in the middle of the youth retreat where maybe someone had ticked you off and you just wanted to get away from your entire youth group. But, by dinner time usually everything was resolved and all was well in the world again.
10. The food
Youth retreat food is either a hit or a miss. Luckily, it was usually a hit and youth retreat calories totally don't matter so eat as much as you want!
11. Talent shows
Youth retreat talent shows are some of the weirdest things you will ever be witness to. There is always someone who brought a guitar (how did they know we were having this? Do they just carry their guitar everywhere they go?) and sings How Great Is Our God, there is someone who goes up there and does the cup song, there's someone who goes up there and tells a really bad joke and sits down, there's a group of people who will act out a skit that's somehow related to Jesus, and there's a guy who will get up there and dance. While these acts usually aren't very good, we all for some reason eat it up. If you think I'm kidding, I once won a youth retreat talent show with my friend for us lip-syncing to Just Give Me A Reason... tell me these things aren't weird.
12. You'll strengthen lots of friendships:
Youth retreats are good for something, other than of course the whole finding Jesus thing...that is really important as well. But, when you go with people who thought were kind of friends, a youth retreat will turn an average friend into your best friend.
