This past weekend, I had the privilege of being on the prayer team for this retreat called Koinonia at my school. Going on the retreat last year, as a retreatant had a huge impact on me and my prayer life, as well as me being able to gain a new family.

In high school, after I went on my first retreat my freshman year and had a significant conversion experience, I started attending youth group every week. Through this experience I gained a lot of good friends to get through high school with. That first year of going to youth group, I grew so close with a lot of people that I considered it our Antioch family (Antioch is what our high school retreat/youth group is/was called after Acts 11:26, where the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch). After people started graduating and not attending youth group, our "family" started dissipating. What may have made it a little bit worse, as well, was that the youth minister at the time kept changing the little things about the retreat that had made a huge impact on me. Because of this I felt that the future participants wouldn't have as intense of an experience as I did.

Because of losing my Antioch family over time, and myself graduating and going away to college, I longed to become part of another close family, which is one of the main reasons I decided to go on the retreat. Plus, I always loved going on retreats and go so much out of them, so I really had nothing to lose. The retreat I went on is called Koinonia, which is Greek for "community".

Through the various talks and activities I was able to grow so much deeper in my relationship with God, which of course He knew more of how much I needed to go on this retreat than I did at the start, but now I'm so glad I went.Over the course of the retreat, and now being on team for the second time, I have gained such an amazing and close family of people I know I can count on for anything.

Being able to pray for all the retreatants and experience the retreat in a different way than I had before, was a really refreshing experience, one of which I'll never forget and that brought me even closer to our Lord. Being able to take part in the 25th retreat this semester was a really cool experience. I hope I can pass the torch onto future retreatants to allow even more people the same experience as I had.