Awkward Yahtzee

What a weird day...

Started off by coming out of the shower to find two of my sister's friends laying on the couch as I come out rapped in my towel. One of them was pretty cute, but it was kinda awkward walking out there in just a towel. Last time I saw them, I was shirtless...I'm starting to see a pattern here. It actually bothered me all day at work because I was embarrassed for the first time in a long time because I had nothing to say (weird huh? Mr. Rico Suave speechless? whaaaaa...). Maybe I messed up my chance, maybe not, but it sure was awkward.

Work was aight, nothing special besides video editing. I'm going to have Friday off as we begin our baseball tournament in Compton. Here's the really cool thing: If we win this tournament, I get to spend all of next week in Florida coaching the best week of my life (hopefully it won't be too stressing). I'm excited, but realistic...there's a slim chance, but a good slim chance if you know what I mean.

What a change of pace tonight was. The topic was brought up to cancel the GL Retreat due to a lack of motivation and commitment from leaders as well as participants. I know we all need to take responsibility for what ended up being a bad situation (myself included) that could have resulted in no retreat whatsoever. I was determined to stand by my decision that we could still put on an awesome retreat, and I was ready to do it all by myself had it come to it. Lucky for me, I have an awesome team who, after we voiced our concerns, discerned and came up with a totally awesome alternative to the GL Retreat. Coincidently, this alternative frees us from a lot of paperwork and budget costs and ended up working out pretty well. Instead of a 3 day retreat, we're going to be putting on the first ever GL Symposium YATSE (yahtzee). The general concern was that their weren't a lot of people interested in going to the retreat as we only had one person pay in advance, and the people that were planning on going to the retreat had just come back from an awesome one in San Diego anyway. We thought about our audience, and what would be most beneficial to them, and Andrew began talking about our small YATD (yahtduh) ministry. The purpose of this group would be to research a topic, write a paper about it, then present it, engaging in lively discussion about faith, theology, and just general questions. The purpose was to learn more about your faith, learn more about why we do things the way we do them, and to learn more about God our Creator. We decided to develop this idea and expand it to a one day "retreat" or as Mike more accurately put it, a "symposium" (I still don't know what a symposium is, but I'll just nod my head and smile =P ). However, we also have the room the entire weekend, and we plan on taking advantage of that. Friday will be a fun day filled with games, snacks, icebreakers, video games, and praise and worship, topped off with the Liturgy of the Hours Night Prayer. The next day, all participants would return to engage in lively discussions about topics presented throughout the day. The objective is to learn more and ask questions, not just accept everything that you hear blindly. The day would gradually progress, emphasizing the Holy Eucharist that we celebrate every Sunday. Topics could include how theology is relevant in our lives, what is reconciliation and how has it developed over the years, why do we need it, the Eucharist and the early Church, social justice, living out your faith, and celebrating the Blessed Sacrament. I will be giving a presentation on Reconciliation, and I'm definitely motivated to learn more about the subject. I'm excited about this Symposium and I feel like it's going to be a lot of fun engaging in discussions and learning more about my faith. Sunday would focus more on the Word of God in the Bible, and may even include Lectio Divina (which ended up working out amazingly great in San Diego this past weekend I might add). We would cap off the whole weekend with the Holy Eucharist, where our band would be playing, and just having a good time celebrating the greatest prayer in our Church. Just because the GL Retreat is different, don't be scared. It's something new, something stimulating, and it's going to be a lot of fun on the weekend of August 14, 15, and 16th.

Now when I was first told that there was a general concern about shutting down the retreat, I was completely against it and it made me angry, but valid points were brought up, however I was still unwilling to accept it. God gave us a chance to think about it and talk about it, and this may be what He wants, who knows, but we're gonna do the best of our abilities to put on one of the most unique, awesome events GL has ever seen.