Thursday is the new Wednesday

Hello, friends! As I'm sure you've noticed, it is not, in fact, Wednesday, and yet I am posting my blog. Wednesdays were perfect for blog-writing once upon a time, but recently they've become my busiest day of the week, so I'm moving my weekly blog to Thursday.

The most exciting part of my week was the Campus Leadership Retreat! Austin, Caroline and I went up to Valdosta Friday night and arrived back in Tallahassee Sunday afternoon. We greatly enjoyed our time away. Let me tell you what we did and learned!

First and foremost, we learned that I am absolutely terrible at trivia. The students who came to the retreat -- our group from FSU, a group from the University of Georgia, and a group from Valdosta -- are all pretty good at trivia. I'm awful. There's no way around that. But I hope I provided them with some amusement during "Hollywood Game Night". I was incredibly impressed when Austin figured out "Jason Alexander" from my clue of "Last name, had a very very bad day." (Get it? "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?") However, I did have one moment of glory. Austin said, "2000s, sitcom, Italians." Everyone else had blank stares. I said, "Everybody Loves Raymond?" I was correct. That's right, people.

Moving on, our weekend was focused around writing devotions. Our speaker was Rev. Tom Eggebrecht, who is currently serving a congregation in Casselberry, Florida. Before moving to the Sunshine State, he served at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and was an adjunct professor at Concordia Wisconsin. I love our small Lutheran world! We had a few good conversations about our WI connections.

Tom gave us some good insights into devotion writing. He said it's important to focus on a single, specific objective in our devotions. He recommended that we form that objective into a sentence before we begin writing. For example, the devotion I wrote over the weekend had this sentence: "Every congregation member should be motivated to proclaim the Gospel because of the blessings they have received." It had a specific audience (congregation members), a purpose (to motivate), and a reasoning behind that purpose (the blessings). With those three things in mind - audience, purpose, reasoning - it was easier to structure my devotion.

Tom also talked to us about creativity. He believes that everyone is creative, because we were created by a creative God. He used an incredible speaker named Micah Bournes as an example. I would really recommend you look him up, especially the video "Ex Nihilo."

At the retreat, we played frisbee, ate ice cream, watched football games, and made Wal-Mart runs, and all of it was delightful time spent in the company of fellow Christians. I'm glad we were able to attend and learn and grow and have fun!

No pictures for you this week, but next week I plan to have a special blog post per the request of my sister-in-law Lindsey. Get excited!